Menai Bridge

A food town above its weight

Sosban and The Old Butchers is a Michelin-starred restaurant squeezed into the town's old butcher's shop. Chef Stephen Stevens serves a surprise tasting menu — you don't choose, you eat whatever North Wales produced that week, which might turn out to be cod with fermented onion fudge. It is a very small room. That a town of about 3,376 people supports it at all tells you something about Menai Bridge, which for its size is a serious food town.

Down on the water, Dylan's opened in 2012 with a boatyard theme and window tables looking out at the Menai Strait and Telford's suspension bridge. The signature dish is fresh Welsh mussels with cream and cider, though they also do freshly baked pizzas and modern British classics. The Freckled Angel does elevated British small plates in an intimate room decorated, as the name suggests, with angels. And there is a full-size Waitrose on Mona Road, which is a lot of Waitrose for a town this small and, for anyone staying nearby, the obvious place to do the main shop.

Pubs for different temperaments

The Bulkeley Arms on Uxbridge Square is a lively local with Robinsons ales, screens for live sport, pool, darts and football teams; one Tripadvisor review called it "Best pub in Menai bridge." At Glyn Garth, the Gazelle Hotel has a waterside terrace about ten metres from the Strait, three changing beers, homecooked seafood and views of Bangor Pier and Eryri. Three of its eleven bedrooms take dogs. The Liverpool Arms is a whitewashed corner pub built in 1843 for passengers arriving by Liverpool packet steamer.

The promenade built in gratitude

The best walking is the Belgian Promenade, a flat shoreline path built between 1914 and 1916 by Belgian refugees from Mechelen in thanks for the town's hospitality. It runs from beneath the suspension bridge to Church Island, reached by a short paved causeway walkable at most tides. On the island, St Tysilio's is an early-15th-century church with a rare cruck-truss roof and no electricity; services are still held there, and it is popular for weddings. The war poet Cynan is buried in the churchyard, alongside several men who died building the bridge.

Bridge, woodland and onward connections

Above the promenade is Coed Cyrnol, the Colonel's Wood, a nature reserve full of red squirrels. The bridge itself opened in 1826, one of the world's first major suspension bridges, and cut nine hours off the coach run from London to Holyhead. Bangor station is about two miles away over the water, a ten-minute drive; buses run to Beaumaris, Llangefni and Holyhead.

Welsh language on screen

The long-running S4C soap Rownd a Rownd is filmed here, using a converted garage as its shop set. The town is genuinely Welsh-speaking, and the soap simply films it as found.