Great Orme Walk, Llandudno (9.4 km)

The Great Orme is the limestone headland above Llandudno in north Wales, and this walk goes up it, round it and back down in 9.4 km. It gains roughly 370 metres doing that, which is more than a 207 metre summit suggests, because the Great Orme keeps rising and falling once you are on it. For a longer Anglesey day see Holyhead, and for Snowdonia woodland see Llyn Elsi above Betws-y-Coed.

The Great Orme walk

The Great Orme is steep at both ends of this circuit and rolling in between.

• Start and finish: Llandudno, at the western end of the promenade
• Distance: about 9.4 km (5.8 miles)
• Ascent: roughly 370 metres
• Terrain: pavement through the town, then grass and limestone paths — steep in two places, stony and exposed higher up, and worth proper boots

Happy Valley to the summit

The Great Orme starts where the promenade stops. The route turns inland past the foot of the cable car, cuts through Happy Valley and gains about 120 metres in the next kilometre before easing into a traverse west. The Great Orme Tramway’s halfway station sits right beside the path at 2 km, and the Bronze Age copper mines — worked 4,000 years ago, and uncovered in 1987 — sit just off it two hundred metres further on.

The high point of the circuit comes at 2.8 km, a little under the 207 metre summit, beside the visitor centre and the upper stations of the tramway and cable car. Anglesey is out to the west from there, the Carneddau stand up inland, and the Irish Sea takes everything to the north.

St Tudno’s Church and Marine Drive

Past the summit the Great Orme settles at around 145 metres and holds it for three kilometres, working round the seaward edge of the headland. St Tudno’s Church is roughly 300 metres off the route to the north, in a hollow of its own — founded in the sixth century, rebuilt between the twelfth and fifteenth, and the church Llandudno takes its name from. Marine Drive, the toll road round the headland, passes just below the path at the north-west corner.

Sheep and goats have the run of the Great Orme. The goats are there because Queen Victoria made a gift of them to Lord Mostyn, and they have been wild for about a hundred years; dogs need to be under control the whole way round.

Back down to Llandudno

The return leg pulls back up to about 178 metres before turning east above the mines, and then the Great Orme gives everything back at once — 140 metres of descent in the last kilometre and a half, down through Happy Valley to the seafront. What the promenade is doing is a poor guide to what the summit is doing. The Great Orme Tramway and the cable car both reach the summit, which makes this an easy walk to do in one direction only.

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References

• Exploring the Great Orme, countryside service guide
• Great Orme nature trail, route description
• Great Orme wildlife and habitats
• Great Orme goats, herd history and management
• Activities and attractions on the headland
• St Tudno’s Church, Llandudno, Cadw listing
• Great Orme Bronze Age Mines, discovery and excavation