Wales
South Stack
Four hundred steps down to a lighthouse on its own rock, choughs and puffins overhead.
The lighthouse sits on a rock of its own off Anglesey's western tip, the far north-west corner of Wales, and the way to it is 400 steps down the cliff and a bridge across the gap, with seabirds wheeling at eye level the whole way. South Stack is somewhere the cliff itself is the spectacle, thousands of nesting birds on ledges you look straight across at.
In the nesting season the colony is full: guillemots and razorbills packed on the ledges, puffins in their burrows, kittiwakes calling, with choughs and peregrines on the heather-covered cliffs and Manx shearwaters and gannets passing offshore. Ellin's Tower, the RSPB observatory, has telescopes and live camera feeds off the nesting ledges, and the visitor centre above has a café; the lighthouse is Trinity House's, opened to visitors under licence, so the island and the steps are reachable only in its advertised hours. The reserve behind it is the largest maritime heath in North Wales, home to the spotted rock-rose, Anglesey's county flower, and spathulate fleawort, a plant with no other home on earth. On Holyhead Mountain the Tŷ Mawr hut circles are eight farmsteads from some 4,000 years ago; the rocks below the lighthouse have a stranger claim: Jerry Hall posed on them as a mermaid for the cover of Roxy Music's Siren. Holyhead, three miles off, has the Harbourfront Bistro on the water for the evening; come in the seabird months and go early; the birds are the reason.
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Solo
Ellin's Tower when it opens, the steps down and up while the cliffs are loud with birds, and the heath walk to the hut circles after.
Couple
A June evening on the cliff path with puffins coming in, then the bistro in Holyhead.
Family
Four hundred steps to count, puffins through the telescopes in the tower, a lighthouse on its own island and a café at the top.
- The lighthouse stands on a small island off Holy Island's western cliffs, and reaching it means 400 steps down the cliff face and a bridge over the channel.
- South Stack's seabird colony holds guillemots, razorbills, puffins and kittiwakes, with choughs and peregrines nesting on the heather-covered cliffs and Ellin's Tower as the observatory.
- The reserve holds the largest area of maritime heathland in North Wales, and spathulate fleawort, found nowhere else on the planet, lives on the heath of Holy Island.
- On the mountain behind are the Tŷ Mawr hut circles, eight small farmsteads some 4,000 years old; on the rocks below the lighthouse, Jerry Hall posed as a mermaid for the cover of Roxy Music's Siren.
A café lunch at the RSPB visitor centre above the cliffs, before or after the steps.
Supper at the Harbourfront Bistro in Holyhead, three miles away, on the waterfront looking over the port.
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