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Cemaes Bay, Anglesey: the beach and the harbour breakwater with the village terraces rising behind

Isle of Anglesey · North coast

Cemaes Bay

The most northerly village in Wales, wrapped around a sheltered harbour with a sandy beach on one side and a rocky one on the other.

  • Type of placeCoastal harbour village
  • Best forTwo beaches & a cliff-top church walk
  • Visit lengthHalf a day
  • SettingAnglesey's north coast, facing the Irish Sea
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01The village

A harbour with a beach on either side of it

Cemaes is arranged around one sheltered inlet. The stone breakwater and the boats sit in the middle; Traeth Mawr, wide and sandy, opens north-east of it, and Traeth Bach, small and rocky, is a few hundred metres the other way. The village itself (High Street, the chapels, the shops and the Heritage Centre) sits a couple of minutes inland, across the bridge over the Afon Wygyr. All of it is flat.

Why it matters

Two completely different shorelines, a working harbour and a village you can walk end to end, and then a cliff path that turns the stop into a proper half day. Few places on Anglesey give you that much variety inside one short walk.

Cemaes Bay seen along Traeth Mawr at low tide, with the houses and the eastern headland beyond

Character

A working village, not a resort

Boats still use the harbour; the shops and chapels behind it serve the people who live here.

Pace

Flat, and small enough to walk

Beach, harbour and High Street are minutes apart; only the cliff path asks anything of you.

Landscape

North-facing, between two headlands

An inlet open to the Irish Sea, with cliffs east towards Llanbadrig and the Wylfa headland west.

Best for

A beach day that turns into a walk

Best for families on the sand, and for anyone willing to keep going east along the cliff.

02Discover

The moments that define a visit

Boats moored inside the stone breakwater at Cemaes Harbour under a dark sky

The harbour that made the village

Small boats still lie inside the same stone arm that sheltered the ships once built here.

The St Patrick Time and Tide Bell standing on its legs on the sand at Traeth Mawr, Cemaes

A bell the sea rings

A bronze bell stands out on the sand that nobody plays; the rising tide moves the clapper.

Llanbadrig Church on its cliff-top site above the sea, surrounded by its graveyard

A church on the cliff edge

A church standing on the cliff edge with the most northerly burials in Wales around it.

Traeth Bach at Cemaes, a small shingle-and-sand cove with rocks and houses on the low cliff above

The other beach, minutes away

Cross the harbour and the shoreline changes entirely: pebbles, weeded rock and pools instead of sand.

Beyond the first defining moments, the fuller Cemaes catalogue continues below.

Find your bearings

The harbour is the middle of everything. Traeth Mawr opens to its north-east, Traeth Bach to its south-west, the village sits inland behind the bridge, and the cliff path runs a mile north-east to Llanbadrig.

Boats moored inside the stone breakwater at Cemaes Harbour No verified image yet

Cemaes Harbour

The middle of the bay, at the foot of the village. Everything else here is measured from it.

Harbour

What to see and do

Six stops, from the harbour in the middle of the bay to the church on the cliff a mile north-east. No cafés, pubs or shops are named here; see Local life for the village's everyday character.

Boats moored inside the stone breakwater at Cemaes Harbour under a dark sky

Harbour

Cemaes Harbour

Walk the breakwater arm and you see how the whole village is arranged around one sheltered inlet. This harbour is why Cemaes is shaped as it is.

30–45 minThe middle of the bay

Traeth Bach at Cemaes, a small shingle-and-sand cove with rocks and houses on the low cliff above

Beach

Traeth Bach

A completely different shoreline a few hundred metres from the first: shingle, weeded rock and pools instead of sand. Quieter on any warm day.

20–40 minSouth-west of the harbour

Cemaes Heritage Centre on High Street, a whitewashed corner building with blue signage

Heritage

Cemaes Heritage Centre

The one room in the village that puts the port’s story in order, told through the people who worked it. Volunteers keep it open, so times vary.

30–45 minHigh Street, in the village

St Padrig's Church, Cemaes, a stone Victorian church seen in full elevation from the road

Heritage

St Padrig's Church, Cemaes

The village’s own church, and the one with no graveyard, which is why Cemaes Anglicans are still carried the mile north-east to Llanbadrig.

10–20 minThe western end of the village

Llanbadrig Church on its cliff-top site above the sea, surrounded by its graveyard

Heritage

Llanbadrig Church

A plain stone church alone on the cliff, with the most northerly graves in Wales around it. Nothing outside prepares you for the blue tiles inside.

45–60 minThe cliff, a mile north-east

Car-park charges, the Heritage Centre's opening times and the exact boundary of the seasonal beach dog-ban area are all reviewed locally and are not printed here, so confirm them before you plan a day around them.

Isle of Anglesey County Council, car parks

Sources

03Story

A port at the top of Wales

The name means a bend or an inlet, the shape of the bay itself. For most of its recorded life this was not a place people came to look at. It was a place things left from.

  1. Porth Wygyr, and a seat of the commote

    Before the conquest of 1282–83 this was a commotal seat under the Prince of Wales. Its older name, Porth Wygyr, belongs to the river that still runs out through the village to the sand.

  2. Herring first, then a working port

    Cemaes fished for herring before it traded. Through the 18th and 19th centuries it shipped out limestone, marble, bricks, corn and ochre and took in coal and flour, and ships were built in the shelter of the harbour itself.

  3. A breakwater rebuilt against the same sea

    The first breakwater went up in the 1830s. Storm damage in 1889 forced a replacement, and further improvements followed in 1900. The arm you walk today is the third answer to the same problem.

  4. Bricks, a tramway, and fourteen years

    A brickworks opened in the valley in 1907 with a Hoffman kiln and a tramway running down to the pier. It closed in 1914. The tramway's line is still there under the path through the trees.

  5. A lifeboat, and then a power station

    An RNLI station stood on the western headland from 1872 to 1932: sixty launches, forty-two lives. Wylfa began generating on the same headland in 1971, stopped on 30 December 2015, and in November 2025 was chosen for the UK's first small modular reactors.

The old tramway route from Cemaes harbour to the brickworks, now a woodland path with the rails still visible

The rails to the brickworks are still in the path. Nothing has run on them since 1914.

Atlas of Wales

Local life & everyday character

A village of 1,357, with a beach attached

The Llanbadrig community counted 1,357 people at the 2011 census, and most of them live behind the harbour rather than on it. High Street carries the cafés, pubs and shops, none of them named here as a recommendation, along with two 19th-century chapels, a clock-towered village hall and the war memorial.

Because the A5025 bypasses the village, nobody arrives by accident. The people you pass are either living here or have chosen to come, and a good number of them are walking the Anglesey Coastal Path straight through.

Local tip

The two beaches sit either side of the harbour and are nothing alike. Traeth Mawr is wide sand; Traeth Bach, five minutes round the inlet, is shingle, rock and pools.

High Street, Cemaes, looking north between terraced houses towards the sea
High Street runs inland from the bridge, the village's own street, not a seafront parade.

Where the village lives

The working harbour

Small fishing boats with buoys and pot markers alongside the harbour wall at Cemaes
The working harbour · Cemaes Bay
Boats and pots

Pot buoys, small boats and the harbour wall, and the trade is smaller than it was, but it never stopped.

The street behind it

A row of painted shopfronts and houses on High Street, Cemaes
The street behind the harbour · Cemaes Bay
Shops and houses

Painted fronts, a handful of shops and services, and the everyday business of a village that isn't only for visitors.

The sand and the path

Walkers and a kayak on the wet sand of Traeth Mawr at low tide, Cemaes
The sand and the coast path · Cemaes Bay
Where everyone ends up

The beach is the village's shared ground, and the coast path leaves from the end of it in both directions.

Village rhythm

Morning
The beach car park fills first on a fine day; walkers on the coast path come through early.
Through the day
The promenade and the sand hold most people; High Street stays a working street.
Evening & off-season
The bay faces open water to the north, so the light and the wind both come off the sea; out of season the beach facilities thin out.

The village in one visit

Cemaes keeps its civic buildings where you can see them.

A clock tower on the village hall, two chapels within a few hundred metres of each other, a war memorial with its own inscription, and terraces looking straight down at the boats: the ordinary architecture of a village that has always had to pay for itself.

Plan your time
  • The clock tower of the David Hughes village hall, Cemaes, against a blue sky
    The village hall clock tower, Cemaes
  • Capel Bethesda, Cemaes, a whitewashed chapel with its vestry alongside
    Capel Bethesda, Cemaes
  • The Cemaes war memorial, carrying the inscription ‘Forgotten they shall not be’
    The war memorial, Cemaes
  • Houses stacked above the harbour at Cemaes, with boats on the sand below
    Houses above the harbour, Cemaes

The village church was built without a graveyard, so its dead still go the mile to Llanbadrig.

Atlas of Wales

04Plan

Choose the pace that fits your day

  1. The beach and harbour at Cemaes Bay 1

    Arrive at the beach

    The car park puts you on the promenade behind Traeth Mawr.

  2. The Time and Tide Bell on Traeth Mawr 2

    Walk out to the bell

    How close you get is the tide's decision, not yours.

  3. Boats inside the breakwater at Cemaes Harbour 3

    Round to the harbour

    The breakwater arm, the boats, and the village stacked behind.

  1. The Time and Tide Bell on Traeth Mawr 1

    Traeth Mawr and the bell

    Start on the big beach while the sand is still empty.

  2. Cemaes Harbour and its breakwater 2

    Across the harbour

    Round the head of the inlet, past the moorings.

  3. Traeth Bach, the small beach at Cemaes 3

    Traeth Bach

    Rock, shingle and pools: a different beach entirely.

  4. Cemaes Heritage Centre on High Street 4

    Up into the village

    High Street, the chapels, and the Heritage Centre if it's open.

  1. Cemaes Heritage Centre on High Street 1

    Start in the village

    Get the story straight before you look at the harbour.

  2. St Padrig's Church at the western end of Cemaes 2

    St Padrig's, at the west end

    Five minutes out of your way, and it explains the church you're walking to.

  3. Cemaes Harbour and its breakwater 3

    Down to the harbour

    Then out along the promenade to the far end of the sand.

  4. Llanbadrig Church on the cliff above the sea 4

    The cliff path to Llanbadrig

    A mile of open coast, climbing to the church and its graveyard.

  5. Looking back along Traeth Mawr towards Cemaes 5

    Back down to the bay

    The same path in reverse, with the village in front of you the whole way.

Practical

Plan your visit

Everything you need for arriving and getting around.

Getting here

By road

Cemaes sits just off the A5025, which bypasses the village; the beach is signed from either end. Car parks serve the beach, with further parking in the village.

Open the Traeth Mawr car park in Maps

By bus

Bus services call in the village, including the 61 towards Holyhead and the 62 towards Bangor. Frequencies vary by day and season and are not printed here. Check the current service before travelling.

Route 62 timetable

Practical details

Parking

Four village car parks, run locally rather than by the county council — one off High Street, two on Traeth Mawr and a small one at Traeth Bach — plus free parking up at Llanbadrig Church.

Check the village facilities listing

Charges and restrictions can change. Check the signs when you arrive.

See them on the map
Once you arrive

The beach car park puts you between the two shorelines, so which one you start on is the only decision to make before you set off.

Use Cemaes as a base

Where to go next

Four real Atlas destinations pair with a Cemaes visit. Distances are straight-line from the village, not driving times.

The shingle storm ridge at Cemlyn Bay, Anglesey, with the lagoon behind it.

Cemlyn Bay

A shingle ridge holding back a brackish lagoon, and one of Wales's most important tern colonies: the same coast, without a village on it.

About 2.6 miles west (straight-line) The ochre and rust-coloured open workings of Parys Mountain, Anglesey, seen from the viewing platform.

Parys Mountain

The copper mountain that once supplied the world: an ochre-and-rust landscape that explains where a lot of Cemaes's outbound cargo was going.

About 4.4 miles east (straight-line) Amlwch Port, Anglesey: the narrow rock-cut harbour that shipped Parys Mountain copper.

Amlwch

The north coast's copper town, with a rock-cut harbour far narrower than this one: the industrial scale Cemaes never reached.

About 4.4 miles east (straight-line) The sandy beach at Church Bay, Anglesey, at low tide.

Church Bay

A small west-facing sandy cove round the corner of the island: the sunset side of the same stretch of coast.

About 5.0 miles south-west (straight-line)

On the Atlas

Continue from Cemaes Bay.

At the top of Anglesey, between Cemlyn Bay to the west and Amlwch to the east.

Open Cemaes Bay on the map

Before you go

Wales runs out here, and quietly.

No headland drama, no last-stop signage: only a harbour, two beaches and a graveyard on the cliff.

Open Cemaes Bay on the map Explore the Anglesey Atlas