A puff of green smoke…

There are some places where the old stuff seems to still live on. You know the stuff I’m talking about, the ‘there might be elves, or pirates, or a dragon just around the corner’ stuff, the stuff of our childhood imaginings, the stuff that still keeps me looking for a puff of green smoke above every beach-bound outcrop of rock I see.

Magic. It’s everywhere if you look hard enough

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I’d never been to Newborough Forest on Anglesey and really didn’t feel the need to go there. But then I stumbled across a picture of a lonely lighthouse and on investigation found that it, and another smaller lookout tower, are to be found at the far end of the beach at Newborough Warren on Llanddwyn Island. A lighthouse and an Island! I could smell adventure and I knew immediately that I had to visit. After all there could be a few pirates, even a giant or two, and couldn’t I just see a puff of green smoke from behind the imaginary rocks inside my head?

Llanddwyn Island (Ynys Llanddwyn) is a magical place, a narrow finger of land sticking out like a pointer across the Irish Sea. It isn’t quite an island, generally you can walk to it as it remains attached to Wales by a spur of rock and sand at all but the highest tides. It is almost an island though, surrounded by the vast views of Snowdonia and the Lleyn Peninsula in the distance.

We arrived at the forest gate, the sat-nav guiding us there without fault, and paid our three pounds. The forest was dark and cool and tall, a reserve for red squirrels (not that we saw one) with a winding sun-dappled track leading gently to the beach car park. After a camping stove hotdog lunch at the fine stone barbecue stands in the excellent car park picnic area we strolled along the magnificent wooden boardwalk to the beach.

To be honest this place was too good to be true. Too well done, too well kept, everything for an afternoon ramble had been thought about right down to the dozens of forest brown butterflies that fluttered about as we walked besides the meadow flowers along the deep brown bark chippings path. Down the steps and onto the sand - was that a pirate ship in the distance? Did I catch a glimpse of a mermaid’s tail as it shimmered in the sunshine before disappearing back into the bright blue sea?

The beach was long and sandy and in the distance to the right I could see the island and the two lighthouses on the stony outcrop of rock. We set out along the beach which was disappointingly practically shell-free; a flaw, albeit a small one, in the perfection of the place at last.

Along the beach and up the shingle and thirty minutes later we were there. We had reached Ynys Llanddwyn and a magical gateway stood before us. All we had to do was open it and step through… was that green smoke I could see in the distance, or did I glimpse the flutter of a Jolly Roger?

And down the road, not five miles away, the ogre sniffed and bellowed.