Llandudno is a Victorian resort that never stopped being one, and that turns out to suit children very well. There is a pier with an arcade, Punch and Judy on the promenade, a cable-hauled tram up a mountain, Britain’s longest cable car, a four-thousand-year-old copper mine you can walk into, a zoo on a hillside and two beaches facing opposite directions.
It is also compact. Almost everything above is within two kilometres of the promenade, and the town is flat where it matters.
The headland behind the town is the main event, and there are three ways up it — which is itself the attraction as far as most children are concerned.
The Great Orme Tramway has been hauling passengers up from Victoria Station on Church Walks since 1902. It is cable-worked, it runs on street track through the town before climbing the open hillside, and it is one of only a handful of cable-hauled street tramways left in the world. It carries over two hundred thousand people a year and runs from late March to late October.
The cable car from Happy Valley is the longest in Britain — a mile and forty feet — and swings over the Orme’s eastern flank with the whole bay below.
The summit complex at the top has a café, a visitor centre and enormous views, and the Kashmiri goats are usually somewhere on the slopes.
Ride up one way and down the other; it is the standard Llandudno day and it is a good one. Our Great Orme guide has the detail.
Halfway up the Orme, and the thing most families remember. These are Bronze Age copper mines — worked around four thousand years ago, rediscovered in 1987, and now the largest prehistoric mine open to visitors anywhere in the world. You put on a hard hat and walk into tunnels cut with stone and bone tools by people who had no metal to dig with.
It is genuinely extraordinary, it is underground and therefore weatherproof, and it takes about an hour and a half. Some of the passages are low and narrow. See our Great Orme Mines page.
Llandudno Pier is Grade II* listed, 700 metres long — the longest in Wales and fifth longest in England and Wales — and it has been named Pier of the Year twice. There is an arcade, food, rides and fishing off the end, and walking out along it is free.
On the promenade in summer there is still a Punch and Judy show, run by the same family for generations, plus donkey rides on the sand at low tide.
North Shore is the main one — shingle at the top with sand at low tide, in a two-kilometre curve between the Ormes, with the pier at one end.
West Shore, twenty minutes’ walk across the neck of the peninsula, is sandier, flatter, emptier and better for young children, with dunes and the Conwy estuary rather than the open sea.
Neither is Wales’s finest beach, but both are safe, supervised in season and right next to the town.
The Welsh Mountain Zoo at Colwyn Bay, six kilometres east, sits on a wooded hillside with a view over the bay and specialises in Welsh and mountain species alongside the usual big animals. It is hilly — worth knowing with a pushchair — and takes half a day.
Angel Bay on the Little Orme is a free alternative: a cove where grey seals haul out and pup, usually with animals visible from the clifftop above. Autumn is the best time.
RSPB Conwy, at Llandudno Junction, has hides, trails and a family-friendly visitor centre on the estuary.
Conwy Castle is five kilometres away and is exactly what a child means by a castle: eight towers, curtain walls, spiral stairs and battlements you can walk. Edward I built it between 1283 and 1287 as part of a walled town, and you can walk the town walls too. Add the Smallest House in Great Britain on the quay — three metres by one and a half — and it is an easy and memorable half day.
Penrhyn Castle near Bangor, twenty kilometres west, is a vast Victorian fantasy castle with a model railway museum and grounds.
Great Orme Mines is underground. Conwy Castle is not, but the towers give shelter. Venue Cymru on Mostyn Broadway runs family shows and pantomime. The Home Front Museum on New Street is a small, well-liked recreation of wartime Llandudno. And the pier’s arcade is under cover.
Our wet weather guide has the list.
Mostyn Street and the streets off it have most of the town’s restaurants and nearly all are informal. Johnny Dough’s does wood-fired pizza and is the family default; Dinos is an American-style diner; Forte’s and Home Cookin’ cover the traditional end. The promenade and the pier have chips and ice cream. Our eating guide has more.
Getting here. Trains run into Llandudno itself on a branch from Llandudno Junction, with through services from London Euston several times a day and hourly trains from Manchester in about two and a half hours.
Parking. The Victoria Centre, Dale Road, York Road and Maelgwyn Road car parks serve the town; there is a car park at the Orme summit and at Happy Valley.
Seasons. The tramway, the cable car and the Punch and Judy are seasonal, roughly Easter to October. The mines are open through most of the year but check in winter.
Wind. The cable car does not run in high wind, which in North Wales is a regular occurrence. Have the tram as a backup.
An Orme day. Tram up from Church Walks in the morning, look round the summit and have lunch there, then walk or take the cable car down to Happy Valley and finish at the Great Orme Mines on the way back into town. Three forms of Victorian transport, a mountain and a Bronze Age copper mine in one day, and none of it involves much walking.
A castle and beach day. Train or drive to Conwy in the morning for the castle, the town walls and the smallest house on the quay; back to Llandudno for the afternoon on West Shore, which has the sand and the space; and the pier in the early evening. If the tide is right, add the donkeys on North Shore.
Under five: the promenade, Punch and Judy, the donkeys, West Shore’s sand, the tram, and the pier.
Five to eleven: the sweet spot. The mines, the cable car, Conwy Castle, the Welsh Mountain Zoo, the seals at Angel Bay.
Teenagers: the Zip World slate caverns inland, the Snowdon Mountain Railway, the Orme on foot, and the surf and watersports along the coast.
Wind gear more than rain gear — the Orme is exposed and the promenade catches everything coming off the Irish Sea, and a hat that stays on matters more here than a better coat. Beach shoes for the North Shore, which is shingle at the top of the tide. And a plan for the days the cable car is closed, which happens whenever the wind gets up.
The town itself is cheap: the promenade, the pier walk, both beaches, Happy Valley, Haulfre Gardens, the whole Great Orme headland and the seals at Angel Bay are free. The tram, the cable car, the mines and the zoo all charge, and a family doing all four in a week will spend a fair amount — so alternate a paid day with a free one, which is easy here because the free things are genuinely good.
The Great Orme — tram up, cable car down, with the Bronze Age mines in between.
Yes, with hard hats provided, though some passages are low and narrow and it is not for anyone claustrophobic.
West Shore for sand and space; North Shore for the pier, the donkeys and the promenade.
Very. Towers to climb, walls to walk, and the town walls as well.
No — it is seasonal and it stops in high wind. The tramway is the reliable alternative.