At Rhos-on-Sea, on the promenade a short walk west of Colwyn Bay proper, there is a stone chapel that measures roughly eleven feet by nine and seats six people. St Trillo's is reputed to be the smallest church in Britain. It was built in the early sixteenth century by monks from Aberconwy Abbey over a holy well that still flows in front of the altar, and the well supplied baptismal water for the whole medieval parish. One visitor put it plainly: "it is humbling to think that you are standing on a spot that has been the site of Christian worship for nearly 1500 years."
That is the far end of the bay. The town itself sits on a sweeping curve of coast with a 4.8km sandy beach, most of it imported by the millions of tonnes, and a long promenade you can walk or cycle on the flat for as long as your legs hold out.
The town rises on wooded hillside between the sea and Pwllycrochan Woods, with the limestone hump of Bryn Euryn behind. Walk up Bryn Euryn and you reach a trig point at 131 metres among the scant remains of an Iron Age hillfort, with views taking in the Carneddau, Anglesey, Puffin Island and both Ormes. A gentler loop from the ruins of Llys Euryn — a medieval hall burnt during the Owain Glyndŵr revolt in 1409, three sides of which still stand with a chimney rising some fifty feet — runs about two miles through woodland.
For a pub, the one people send you to is Pen-y-Bryn, a Brunning & Price gastropub on the hilltop with sea views and a garden. It was built in 1983 by David Taylor, then manager of the Royal Hotel, who decided he wanted to build his own pub and did so partly from bricks salvaged from properties demolished to make way for the A55. One TripAdvisor reviewer called it "one of the best pubs not only in the Conwy area but in the whole of North Wales." Down on the West Promenade, The Toad has been serving for over a hundred years — dog-friendly to the point of offering a menu of dog treats, provided you shake the beach sand off first.
Shopping runs to the outdoor market on Station Road and Sea View Road, around fifty stalls on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and a monthly artisan market on the third Saturday from May to November. Poyntons the butcher has shops in Old Colwyn and Llandudno.
Families do well here. Eirias Park has fifty-odd acres, a boating lake and a natural play park; Porth Eirias on the front hires out kayaks and paddleboards; and the Welsh Mountain Zoo occupies thirty-seven hillside acres above the town, founded in 1963 by the naturalist Robert Jackson.
Trains run from the town-centre station on the North Wales Coast Line, and the A55 puts Conwy and its castle a few minutes west.
The Victoria Pier hosted dances and touring bands until its last gig in August 2008. It partially collapsed into the sea in 2017 and was demolished the year after. A shorter one stands there now.