Gwynedd beach named best in Wales

Molly Stubbs

A Gwynedd beach has claimed a top spot among the best beaches in the UK in this year’s Times and Sunday Times Best Beaches Guide.

Mochras (known in English as Shell Island) is a peninsula west of Llanbedr with a low-lying beach famed for the range of seashells that wash up on its shores. It also boasts stunning views of Eryri and several native wildflowers among the grounds of its campsite.

Chris Haslam, the Times’ Chief Travel Writer, visited 756 beaches across Britain and Northern Ireland, and named Shell Island the Welsh winner in the guide’s 17th edition.

‘Sugar-soft sand’

Haslam wrote: “With views past Harlech to Eryri National Park (Snowdonia) and across Cardigan Bay to the Llyn, the 450-acre Shell Island has one of Europe’s biggest campsites, with 300 acres of fields where the pitches range from the convenient to the wild and from beachside to woodland, with sea views available even in high season.

“At the northern end, around the harbour, the shore is rocky — turning to flat, sugar-soft sand as you head south. The beachcombing is astonishing: perfect scallops, fragile tusks and razors, unblemished turitellas and, most prized by conchologists, tiny cowries.”

Mochras also has connections to Cantre’r Gwaelod, the mythical ‘Welsh Atlantis’ said to have sunk off Cardigan Bay between Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island. Sarn Padrig, the shingle reef extending from the peninsula, occupies the legend as the remains of a dyke that protected Cantre’r Gwaelod from the sea.

In modern times, Mochras has provided fertile ground for scientific research particularly in the field of geology. Between 1967 and 1969 a a 1,938 m stratigraphic proving borehole was drilled on the peninsula by the Institute of Geological Sciences, who found relatively young Tertiary and Mesozoic rocks. 

Honourable mentions

Close runner-up in the Best Beaches Guide went to Dunraven Bay in the Vale of Glamorgan that “bears comparison with geological wonders such as the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim and Lulworth Cove in Dorset — but without the crowds.”

Three Cliffs Bay, Saundersfoot, Whitesands, Mwnt, Aberdaron, and Traeth Llanddwyn also received honourable mentions as the best beaches along Wales’ 1,680-mile coastline.

However, Haslam told Wales Online that Shell Island was the clear winner, saying: “I could see Eryri (Snowdon) to the north, the Llyn Peninsula to the west and, right in front, a beach of flat sand that glittered with seashells. I could have spent a very happy week camping here.”

The full guide and more information about the best British beaches can be found on The Times’ site here.