Porth Eilian is a sheltered sand-and-shingle cove with a slipway, and on a decent day you'll find kayaks going in, people diving, and children turning over rocks in the pools. It sits on the north-east corner of Anglesey, and it is more or less the centre of gravity for a place that otherwise doesn't have a centre.
Llaneilian is a scattered parish rather than a village. The houses spread out among a handful of hamlets — Dulas, Penysarn, Pengorffwysfa, Nebo — with the church and the cove at one end and no obvious middle. There are no shops, no cafés and no pub. For all of that you go to Amlwch, about 2.2 miles west along the minor lanes off the A5025, where there's a harbour, a kiosk selling ice creams by the free car park, and the Copper Kingdom heritage centre.
So the reason to be here is the coast and the church, and the church is worth the walk.
St Eilian's is Grade I listed and reckoned the best-preserved of Anglesey's medieval Celtic churches. The stone tower with its pyramidal spire is 12th century; the nave and chancel were rebuilt in the 15th. What people come to see is the rood screen and loft from around 1500, oak, with a skeleton painted on the coving above it. The skeleton holds a scythe, and beside it runs a banner reading "Colyn Angau yw Pechod" — "Sin is the sting of death." The roof beams end in carved wooden angels, some of them playing flutes and bagpipes.
There is also a pair of 18th-century wooden dog tongs, used to remove disruptive dogs from services, and a 1667 iron-bound alms chest for pilgrims' offerings.
The pilgrims came for Ffynnon Eilian, a holy well at the foot of a seaside outcrop where people once knelt for cures for ague, fits and scrofula. The offerings it collected were said to fund two farms that kept the church going.
The walking is the other draw. The Llaneilian Circular is about 2.1 miles, starting near the church and crossing low cliffs and farmland — moderate, with one hill the guides describe as a challenging descent. It takes in the old slate quarry, an 1841 telegraph station, and the lighthouse out at Point Lynas.
Point Lynas is a short walk in its own right. The 1835 lighthouse stands high enough on the headland that it needed almost no tower, and from the point you can see the Isle of Man on a clear day. It's a good spot for grey seals and porpoises, and for chough, ravens and oystercatchers overhead. The keeper's cottages are let as holiday accommodation now.
The whole coastline falls within the Anglesey Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the Coastal Path runs through, linking Porth Eilian west toward Amlwch Port and east toward Dulas Bay.
By legend, the saint was granted as much land as his pet doe could cover in a day. A greyhound killed the doe, so Eilian cursed the ground: no greyhound could be kept there afterwards. Whether the dog tongs were a precaution, the record doesn't say.
