Colwyn Bay is a town, community and seaside resort in Conwy County Borough, on the north coast of Wales facing the Irish Sea, although it lies inside the historic county boundaries of Denbighshire. At the 2021 census the community had 10,576 people and the wider built-up area 29,275. It sits about 9.5 km east of Llandudno in a straight line, with the coast railway running between the two.
The reason to make the trip is the sand. According to the tourist board, the town is known for a 4.8 km sandy beach enhanced with millions of tonnes of imported sand — man-made, and therefore permanently available irrespective of the tides. Above the town, on the hillside, is the Welsh Mountain Zoo. What Colwyn Bay is not is a going resort: its own reviewers say so, repeatedly and without prompting, and the rest of this page takes them at their word.
Colwyn Bay Beach rates 4.6 from 2,614 Google reviews, and the summary a visitor left in July 2026 is the fairest in the file: “Colwyn Bay may have died as a tourist resort but it has one of the best beaches in North Wales with several miles of sand to enjoy. The only slight downside is the cost of parking on the promenade these days, although despite that on a hot sunny day you might struggle to find an empty space.”
The promenade behind the sand has been rebuilt, and reviewers notice — one in April 2026 called it a “brilliant new promenade to walk as part of the Wales costal path, beautifully flat”. What has not kept up is the plumbing. A visitor in May 2026 wrote, “No toilets for miles had a 6 year old, spent 30 mins walking trying to find a toilet.” Another that month advised, “Make sure little ones have beach shoes as alot of shells and somr broken shells which cut little feet.”
On dogs the reviews contradict each other. One in April 2026 called it “a dog friendly beach”; one in January 2020 said, “Dogs are banned on the main beach in the summer.” Read the signs at the access point rather than either review.
The Porth Eirias Watersports Centre on the front gives tuition in sailing, windsurfing and power boating and hires kayaks and canoes. It is also the town’s most-criticised building, nominated for Building Design’s Carbuncle Cup in 2013 and described by the magazine as “oppressively bland, shaped like a dumpster, and totally insensitive to the beautiful surrounding coast”.
The Welsh Mountain Zoo opened on 18 May 1963, founded by the naturalist Robert Jackson, and covers 37 acres (15 ha) on the slope above the town. Its own site also calls it the National Zoo of Wales and describes views over the Colwyn Bay coastline and the Carneddau mountains. Run as a charity, it has grown in stages: Sea Lion Rock in 2006, the year snow leopards arrived, a lemur walkthrough in 2012, red panda and otter terraces in 2013 and a butterfly forest in 2025. A tropical house funded by donations from 2007 was officially scrapped in 2021.
It scores 4.3 from 7,788 Google reviews, and the recent ones divide on two things: signage and empty enclosures. A visitor in June 2026 wrote, “Cute little zoo. However signage is VERY poor around the zoo, unless you want toilets which are signposted every 10 steps.” One in July 2026 held both sides at once — “3/4 exhibits were empty when we visited but even still there was plenty to see” — while noting that “The map you get is a little vague and up tp a degree of interpretation.”
Eirias Park, 4.3 from 1,270 Google reviews, stands on ground that was once the hamlet of Groes yn Eirias, around a farmhouse of about 1640. It holds a lake with wildfowl, woodland, playgrounds, tennis courts, a skate park, a leisure centre and Eirias Stadium, home to the RGC 1404 rugby side and the rugby league club North Wales Crusaders. Longer-standing visitors mourn what it used to be. One in May 2025 wrote, “I remember Dinosaur World, the Pitch and Put, plus the boating lake with the newts, but they were the old days. Shame it’s not the old days.”
Queens Gardens, by the town centre, is small: 4.6 from 162 Google reviews for a war memorial, flowerbeds, a fountain and a lot of seating. The town has taken gold in Wales in Bloom eight times and silver gilt in Britain in Bloom in 2009 and 2010. Fairy Glen, over in Old Colwyn on Coed Coch Road, rates 4.3 from 160.
Rhos-on-Sea, the western end of the town, holds the older sites: St Trillo and Ednyfed Fychan are both associated with the area, and the ruined medieval manor house of Llys Euryn stands on Bryn Euryn. Its promenade is the best-rated thing in the town at 4.8 from 71 Google reviews, and Rhos-on-Sea Beach takes 4.6 from 1,648. A visitor in July 2026 wrote of it, “A beautiful promenade, so much effort out into making the streetscape engaging. Especially the sensory toys.”
The station opened in 1849 on the Chester and Holyhead Railway as plain Colwyn, was renamed Colwyn Bay in 1876, and the town grew fast on the back of it, as Llandudno and Rhyl did, within reach of the large towns of north-west England. Much of the land around the station belonged to the Pwllycrochan Estate, which from 1875 sold building plots while keeping some control over what went up. Britain’s first National Milk Bar opened here in 1933, the Ministry of Food ran the war from the Colwyn Bay Hotel on Marine Road until 1953, and the National Eisteddfod came in 1910 and again in 1947.
The Victoria Pier carried dances and shows through the twentieth century and drew touring bands into the 1960s; the last gig there was in August 2008. It closed in 2009 after a dispute between the council and its owner, partially collapsed into the sea in January 2017, and was demolished in May 2018. Google still lists a Colwyn Bay Pier as an attraction, at 4.4 from 50 reviews.
The town centre is the weak point, and the A55 and a railway embankment cut it off from the seafront. The BayView Shopping Centre holds 4.0 from 2,732 Google reviews and reads as a town arguing with itself. A visitor in February 2025 wrote that it “vividly represents the decline, if not the demise of this once great seaside town”; one in January 2026 found it “a bit tired and like other centres is struggling to fill all the units”. Against that, another in March 2026 reported that “plans are in place for a major revamp”, and plenty of reviewers go for the café and the quiet.
The train is the established link. Colwyn Bay station sits in the town centre on the North Wales Coast Line, served by Transport for Wales and Avanti West Coast, and the timetable data counts 28 direct trains a weekday from Llandudno and 30 on a Saturday — but none at all on a Sunday, when the coast link east of Llandudno drops to nothing and journeys go via a change at Llandudno Junction. The station rates 4.3 from 94 Google reviews and is listed 4.5 miles from Llandudno’s own. Coming out of it, the beach is on the far side of the line; a visitor in May 2025 gave the way through: “The way to the beach / pier is under the railway .go towards the right of the station to find this walkway.”
By road, the A55 runs through the town parallel to the railway. No bus route between Llandudno and Colwyn Bay is established in the sources behind this guide, so check locally rather than assume one. There was once a direct tram: the Llandudno and Colwyn Bay Electric Railway ran from Llandudno to Rhos-on-Sea from 1907, reached Colwyn Bay in 1908 and closed in 1956. Cyclists should check the current state of National Cycle Network Route 5 first, since it is described as ending unconnected at two points on the edge of Llandudno.
The village and what is around it, at walking scale.
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Background on Colwyn Bay draws on its Wikipedia article, text there being available under CC BY-SA 4.0.