Conwy from Rhyl

Conwy is twenty miles west of Rhyl and contains arguably the finest medieval town in Britain: a complete circuit of thirteenth-century walls enclosing a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the great Edwardian castles, and a town that has been continuously inhabited for 750 years. It is a straightforward thirty-minute drive or train ride from Rhyl and consistently ranks as one of the best day trips on the North Wales coast.

Conwy Castle

Conwy Castle was built between 1283 and 1289 by Edward I and Master James of St George following the second Welsh war, and it is widely regarded as the masterpiece of Edwardian military architecture in Wales. Eight circular towers of roughly equal height are linked by massive curtain walls in a long narrow plan dictated by the rocky promontory on which it sits. There is no keep in the conventional sense — instead, the inner and outer wards are divided by a cross-wall, with the inner ward reserved for the royal apartments.

The castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (designated 1986, jointly with the castles of Caernarfon, Harlech, and Beaumaris). Cadw manages it and it is one of the most visited historic sites in Wales. Unlike the smaller Edwardian castles, Conwy retains enough of its interior fabric to give a real sense of the original spaces: the great hall, the chapel, the king's chambers.

The Town Walls

What distinguishes Conwy from virtually every other medieval walled town in Britain is that its circuit of walls is almost completely intact. The walls run for 1.3 kilometres around the medieval borough, with 21 towers and three original gatehouses. You can walk the full circuit on the wall-walk; the section above the quay gives the famous view of the castle reflected in the Conwy Estuary that appears on approximately every tourist publication about Wales.

The town inside the walls is small — about six blocks — but densely packed with medieval fabric: Plas Mawr (the finest surviving Elizabethan town house in Britain), Aberconwy House (a medieval merchant's house managed by the National Trust), the church of St Mary's (built on the site of the Cistercian abbey that Edward I displaced to build his town), and the Smallest House in Britain on the quayside.

Getting There from Rhyl

By train, Rhyl to Conwy takes about thirty minutes on the North Wales coast line (change at Llandudno Junction). By car, the A55 expressway takes about the same time — twenty to twenty-five miles depending on your starting point in Rhyl. There is a large car park on the quayside outside the walls, though it fills quickly on summer weekends.

Conwy is easily combined with Llandudno — the two towns are four miles apart. A full day covering Conwy in the morning and Llandudno in the afternoon is one of the classic North Wales day trips.