When I clicked on a link promising to reveal “the happiest place to live in Wales” I was a bit surprised at the destination being referenced. But after spending four days there, it all makes perfect sense. There were knockout beaches, beautiful seaside towns and villages with independent shops and restaurants, idyllic places to stay, and all of it surrounded by beautiful countryside.
The happiest place is found by asking thousands of people about their feelings towards where they live, with reference not just to the property itself but the broader area, the sense of community and proximity to important amenities. In 2025, Anglesey topped the list.
Anglesey is as far away from where I live in Cardiff as it’s possible to get within Wales and the infamously poor transport network between north and south Wales make travelling between the two a major undertaking. It’s a 4.5-hour drive from the capital to the south of the island. I could fly to Malaga on the south coast of Spain two hours quicker. But the journey would be nowhere near as spectacular. Neither would the destination. I was gutted when it was time to leave and would have happily stayed there another fortnight. In fact, I’d live there if I could.
Is Anglesey worth visiting?
Very few people I spoke to in south Wales before heading north had ever been to Anglesey. I’d briefly set foot there a couple of times, once on a short day trip in and out, and once to get on a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. South Walians probably know less about Anglesey than the Scousers and Mancunians of north-west England do.
Anglesey is a perfect mix of natural beauty, history and wildlife -Credit:Getty
Now, having spent a mere half-week there, I can emphatically tell you that, yes, it is absolutely worth visiting. The island’s entire coast is designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty home to huge sandy beaches and craggy coves dotted along its unbroken 125-mile coast path. There are castles, historic towns, superb restaurants and it is one of very few places in the UK you can still find red squirrels in their natural habitat.
The 125-mile coastal path surrounds Anglesey -Credit:Getty
The Anglesey Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty also takes in the entire island’s coastline -Credit:Crown Copyright
And with fewer than 70,000 people living within its 276 square miles (that’s 0.7 people per football pitch-sized piece of land compared to 19 in Cardiff) you can explore it all in relative tranquillity. Driving its quiet country roads are a pleasure. You can also get around parts of the island by train.
The Welsh language
One of the greatest joys of visiting Anglesey is that you can start a conversation in Welsh confident that the person you’re talking to will understand you and reply (62% of the population speaks Welsh, according to the Welsh Government, compared to 27% in Wales as a whole). In restaurants and tourist sites, staff speak to each other in Welsh (and not just in the classic and unjustly maligned way of talking openly about someone nearby knowing they can’t understand you).
Things to do
Anglesey’s main attraction is its landscape, whether that’s walking in its countryside, strolling its beaches and coastline or swimming, kite-surfing or kayaking in its bays. Among the standout places to visit are:
Newborough forest and Traeth Llanddwyn: A site now world-famous for its vast beach and photogenic lighthouse on a rocky outcrop. The Corsican pine trees that make up Newborough Forest look like they’ve been there forever but were actually planted between 1947 and 1965 to provide timber and to stabilise the shifting sand dunes of Newborough Warren, “one of the largest and finest dune systems in Britain“.
Ynys Llanddwyn has become hugely popular for its photogenic beauty
Walk through Newborough forest to access Traeth Llanddwyn
The dunes in turn lead to the vast beach and Ynys Llanddwyn island. Although parking is plentiful, be aware that this is place is now hugely popular, particularly with the social media crowd, and you may even find (as I did on my first attempt to visit) that the single road to it from the village of Niwbwrch a couple of miles away is physically blocked by council officials and bollards if there are too many people. The site’s popularity is a real issue for villagers so be respectful. However, once you’re on the beach, it’s so big there is more than enough room for everyone. You can find the 40 best beaches in Wales here.
The sparsely populated island’s interior is made up mostly of rolling fields
These seafront cottages were once lived in by pilots who guided boats into and out from the Menai Strait -Credit:Getty
Beaumaris: This pretty, historic town’s main attraction is its castle, sometimes called “the greatest castle never built” because it was never finished. It was the last of the the so-called “ring of iron” created by Edward I in Wales and “perhaps his masterpiece” according to Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service.
The impressive and centuries-old Beaumaris Castle -Credit:Getty
Beaumaris is a historic and pretty seaside town -Credit:Getty
The “fortress of immense size and near-perfect symmetry” has four concentric rings of formidable defences included a water-filled moat with its very own dock. It’s a jaw-dropping place to walk around, not least because you can visit the interior chapel and walk atop its battlements. Outside the castle, you’ll also find the “Taylor Swift shop” (note the blue plaque claiming the singer “wasn’t born here” — not that that’s stopped them creating a shrine to her within). There are also independent shops and a couple of good pubs including The Bull’s Head and Castle Court Hotel.
Beaches: You’re never far from an outstanding beach no matter where you are on the island. At the seaside village of Rhosneigr you’ll find wide, sweeping sands that are a major hotspot for windsurfing, kitesurfing and surfing. Traeth Mawr near Aberffraw is a secluded beach with dunes which make up one of the most extensive examples of mobile dune habitat in the UK. There are several others, including the beaches at Trearddur Bay and Benllech, both of which are popular with families and sit next to seaside villages.
The beach at Rhosneigr
The beach at Aberffraw on the west coast of Anglesey
Menai Bridge: The town is the gateway to the island and at one end of Thomas Telford’s iconic bridge of the same name. There are interesting shops, including an antiques shop tucked down an alleyway between the high street and car park, as well as a book shop and the excellent Dylan’s deli. There is a good collection of pubs and restaurants catering for all tastes, from the tiny Michelin-starred Sosban and Old Butchers to the hugely popular Dylan’s restaurant where huge glass windows allow you to stare out over the Menai Strait and mainland as you eat.
Thomas Telfords iconic Menai Bridge spans the Menai Straits between the Isle of Anglesey and the north Wales mainland — the town of Menai Bridge is at one end
LlanfairPG: You can’t let a visit to Anglesey pass by without visiting the village with the longest place name in Europe (and second longest in the world). There’s not much else to see here, but a visit is worth it for the sign alone, especially the one at the village’s quaint train station.
You can’t visit Anglesey without visiting the village with the second longest place name in the world
The best place to get a picture is at the train station -Credit:Getty
Nearby: If you do decide you’ve done everything there is to do on Anglesey, there are some brilliant places to visit just across the water on the Welsh mainland. Caernarfon is a lively coastal town with another of Edward I’s astonishing castles and a short drive south will take you to the one-of-a-kind Zip World Llechwedd, where you can bounce on netting suspended in an enormous underground cave at Bounce Below or fly on the Titan zip line at high-speed above the slate-strewn hills and ruined stone buildings from an age where north Wales was the centre of the world’s slate industry.
Places to eat
Dylan’s Menai Bridge is one of the best and most popular places to eat on the island. Its huge glass windows enable you to look out over the Menai Strait and its extensive menu includes local seafood, burgers and pizza. For breakfast or brunch, Clustia Mul in Menai Bridge is a cute place.
Food at Dylan’s including Anglesey scallops -Credit:Dylan’s
Dylan’s serves burgers from its waterfront location on the Menai Strait -Credit:Dylan’s
The White Eagle is a very popular pub and restaurant near Rhoscolyn which was supposedly a favourite of Prince William and Kate when they were based here during William’s time in the RAF. The accessible menu has a wide range, from cod loin or roast peach and burrata salad to classic burgers and fish pie.
The Sea Shanty Cafe: A unique place to eat that would almost feel more at home in New England, this was my favourite place to eat on the island.. It’s a classic, busy beach-front diner with ceilings covered in shells, glass containers containing sand from dozens of beaches around the UK and other nautical and maritime paraphernalia everywhere you look. The menu includes meals like seafood chowder and burgers.
The Sea Shanty Cafe in Trearddur Bay would look just as much at home in Montauk, USA -Credit:David Powell
Red Squirrel Tapas: My mum visited here and loved it. Self-described as “quirky”, it started off selling coffee and hot chocolate in the village of Niwbwrch but for the last couple of years has been serving tapas from 5-9pm, having started in 2023 and been surprised by how popular it was.
Y Marram: Originally launched in 2011 as The Marram Grass by two brothers in an abandoned chicken shed on a caravan park owned by their parents, it quickly became known as one of the best places to eat in Wales before closing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now reopened as Y Marram, it serves food all day, from porridge or full Welsh breakfast in the mornings to refined tasting menus in the evening.
There are only eight seats in the restaurant and it gets booked out far in advance -Credit:Sosban and The Old Butchers
Sosban and the Old Butchers: This tiny restaurant in Menai Bridge only fits a handful of guests and is one of the few restaurants in Wales with a Michelin star, which it has held for several years. There is no menu. Instead, they “create a series of dishes using the best locally sourced produce available to us on the day providing a unique culinary journey not found anywhere else”.
Places to stay
Anglesey has lots of places to stay but I think I may have found the best of the lot. The Barn at Cae Bach consists of two cottages built from the ruins of old farm barns, which were rescued by the current owner, along with the beautiful farmhouse where he now lives. Not only was the two-bedroom cottage cute, cosy and homely inside but there were birds nesting above the back door and it was surrounded on all sides by fields in which dozens of rabbits frolicked and across which you could see the formidable dark outline of Wales’ highest mountain, Yr Wyddfa, in the distance.
My very cute cottage at The Barn at Car Bach -Credit:Steffan Rhys
You can find other cottages at Sykes Holiday Cottages. There are also grand hotels like Chateau Rhianfa, a grade II*-listed former mansion built in French gothic style.
The journey to Anglesey
“It’s not the destination,” goes the famous saying. “It’s the journey.” It may not have been coined with the roads between Cardiff and Anglesey in mind, but it suits it perfectly. Once you hit the Brecon Beacons, the journey is one of epic beauty that doesn’t stop whether you’re pootling through market towns like Rhayader and Machynlleth, traversing the barren hilltops of the Cambrian Mountains, passing through towns like Betws-y-Coed that look and feel like they belong in the Swiss Alps, or staring wide-eyed out of the car window at the staggering scale of Eryri’s mountains.