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Colwyn Bay seen from Penmaenhead at dusk, the beach curving away west with the town spread up the slope behind it

Conwy · the North Wales coast

Colwyn Bay

A resort the railway made, rebuilding its own front: two miles of remade promenade below a town centre that sits uphill from the sand.

  • Type of placeSeaside town
  • Best forLevel seafront walking
  • Visit lengthHalf a day to a full one
  • SettingA long bay under a hillside
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01The town

Two halves, joined by a climb

Colwyn Bay is arranged in two layers that never quite meet. Below, a promenade runs for over two miles along the bay, from the jetty at Rhos-on-Sea in the west to Old Colwyn in the east, carrying the Wales Coast Path. Above it, on the slope, sits the town itself: Station Road, Abergele Road, the shops and the theatre. Between the two run a railway and an expressway, crossed by an underpass.

Why it matters

Most Welsh coastal towns show you what they used to be. Colwyn Bay shows you what it is doing about it: a pier that failed and came back shorter, a beach that had to be delivered, and a seafront rebuilt end to end within a decade.

The bay looking east from Porth Eirias, the concrete sea wall running away along the shore

Character

A town with a resort attached

Around 29,000 people live in the built-up area. Shops, a theatre, schools and a leisure centre serve them; the seafront is the visitor half, and the town above it carries on regardless.

Pace

Level along, steep across

The promenade is flat and hard-surfaced for its whole length. Getting from it to the shops means an underpass and a hill: the one bit of effort in the whole visit.

Landscape

Bay in front, woods behind

A long open bay closed at its western end by the Little Orme, and twenty-one hectares of woodland local nature reserve on the slope directly behind the high street.

Best for

Arriving without a car

The station is step-free with lifts to both platforms, and both the sea and the shops are a few minutes’ walk from it, in opposite directions.

02Discover

The moments that define a visit

The restored deck of Colwyn Bay's Victoria Pier, its copper lamp standards and cast-iron balustrades running out over the beach

Walking out on three bays

A 45-metre deck out over the sand with nothing built on it, which is exactly the point.

The Porth Eirias watersports building lit at dusk, its glass frontage reflected in the wet promenade

The newest thing on the front

A watersports plaza and bistro on the front, where the rebuilding of this seafront actually began.

The jetty at Rhos-on-Sea at low water, small boats resting on the sand beside it

Where the promenade runs out

A stone chapel with room for six people, its altar built over a spring and its door facing the sea.

A path running into dense summer woodland at Pwllycrochan Woods above Colwyn Bay

Woodland behind the high street

Climb past the shops and the town runs out into twenty-one hectares of woodland with waymarked circuits.

Beyond the first defining moments, the fuller Colwyn Bay catalogue continues below.

Find your bearings

Two lines, crossing at the underpass: the promenade running west to east along the bay, and the town climbing away from it; six points, spread across roughly two and a half kilometres.

The restored deck of Colwyn Bay's Victoria Pier running out over the beach No verified image yet

Victoria Pier

On the promenade below the town centre; from Station Road take the underpass and turn left.

Waterfront

What to see and do

Six destinations: two on the rebuilt seafront, one in the town centre, a municipal park, a woodland reserve, and the smallest chapel in Britain at the promenade’s western end. No pubs, cafés or shops are listed here; see Local life for the town’s everyday character.

The restored deck of Colwyn Bay's Victoria Pier, its copper lamp standards and cast-iron balustrades running out over the beach

Grade II pier

Victoria Pier

A short new deck over the sand, edged with cast-iron balustrades saved off the Victorian pier that collapsed. Free, open, and with nothing built on it.

10 minThe promenade, below the town

The Porth Eirias watersports building lit at dusk, its glass frontage reflected in the wet promenade

Watersports & beach

Porth Eirias & the town beach

Where the seafront rebuild began: a glass-and-timber plaza with a watersports centre and a bistro. The dry sand in front of it was brought in and shaped.

1 hour+400 m east of the pier

Check opening times (opens in a new tab)
The red-brick frontage of Theatr Colwyn on Abergele Road, its canopy over the pavement

Working theatre & cinema

Theatr Colwyn

One of the longest continuously running cinema venues in the country, and still a working one: film, drama, dance and live music in the same room.

An evening, or a look in passingAbergele Road, town centre

Book tickets (opens in a new tab)
The bowling green and pavilion in Eirias Park, Colwyn Bay, palms along the edge of the green

Municipal park

Eirias Park & the stadium

Fifty acres of park a resort town bought for itself, still doing the same job: boating lake, bowling greens, tennis courts and an events stadium.

1 hour to half a dayInland from Porth Eirias

Check leisure centre opening (opens in a new tab)
A path running into dense summer woodland at Pwllycrochan Woods above Colwyn Bay

Local Nature Reserve

Pwllycrochan Woods

Woodland climbing the slope directly behind the shops: the surviving fragment of the estate whose sale created the town, with four waymarked circuits inside.

20 min to 1.5 hoursThe slope above the town centre

Inside St Trillo's Chapel at Rhos-on-Sea, a barrel-vaulted stone room with flowers on the altar built over the spring

Grade II listed chapel

St Trillo’s Chapel, Rhos-on-Sea

Step through the door on the foreshore and there is room for six people, with the altar standing over a spring. Still in weekly use.

10 minMarine Drive, the promenade’s west end

Check opening times (opens in a new tab)

Theatr Colwyn’s programme, Porth Eirias’s seasonal watersports provision and St Trillo’s service times all change and none is printed here. Confirm anything you plan a day around.

Theatr Colwyn: what’s on

Sources

03Story

A town built to order, twice

Nothing here grew slowly. A railway arrived, an estate was sold, and a resort was laid out on the slope in a single generation, and when the front it was built around finally failed, the same thing happened again.

  1. A parish on the shore, long before a town

    The bay belonged to the parish of Llandrillo-yn-Rhos. A chapel dedicated to St Trillo stood over a spring on the foreshore, and around 1186 Cistercian monks are recorded working a fish weir at Rhos Fynach nearby. When the railway came, this was still the only settlement pattern here.

  2. The railway, then the estate sale, 1849–1865

    The Chester and Holyhead Railway reached the shore in 1849 and opened a station called simply Colwyn, renamed Colwyn Bay in 1876. In September 1865 the Pwllycrochan estate — a mansion, its gardens and some seven hundred acres of the hillside — was sold for £26,000, and the land the town now stands on went into development.

  3. The resort and its pier, 1885–1934

    A Public Hall went up on Abergele Road from 1885 and was showing films by January 1909. The Victoria Pier opened on 1 June 1900 and was extended three years later. Its pavilion burned in 1922, was rebuilt, burned again in 1933, and a third opened in 1934. The National Eisteddfod came in 1910 and again in 1947.

  4. The Ministry of Food, from 1939

    When war broke out the Ministry of Food was moved out of London to Colwyn Bay, and the civil servants who came with it ran national food distribution and rationing from here. The Dig for Victory campaign was directed from this coast, out of requisitioned hotels and offices in a seaside town.

  5. Losing the pier, rebuilding the front, 2008–2021

    The pier closed in 2008 and spent years in dispute. Sections collapsed into the sea in February 2017; the structure was dismantled between January and May 2018. Meanwhile the Waterfront Project remade 2.3 miles of promenade from Rhos jetty to Old Colwyn, opened Porth Eirias in 2014 and started phase two in August 2016. In July 2021 a 45-metre pier reopened, carrying 74 refurbished panels of the original ironwork.

The Colwyn Bay promenade running away east under a grey sky, wet after rain

The chapel on the foreshore was already centuries old when the first train arrived. Everything else on this bay is younger than the railway.

Atlas of Wales

Local life & everyday character

The shops are up the hill

Everyday Colwyn Bay happens on Station Road and Abergele Road, above the railway and the expressway rather than beside the sea. Cafés, pubs, independent shops and chains, the library and the theatre are all up there, along a street that was pedestrianised and still carries its Victorian frontages.

Down on the front it is a different crowd: walkers, runners and cyclists using two continuous miles of level surface, in more or less any weather. The two halves of the town see each other daily and rarely mix.

Local tip

If you park on the promenade expecting shops at the top of the beach steps, you are in the wrong half. The town centre is through the underpass and up.

The rebuilt West Promenade at Colwyn Bay, its wide paved surface and restored fountain, apartments along the road behind
The rebuilt promenade: wider, raised and resurfaced end to end through the 2010s.

Where the town lives

The street the town shops on

Station Road, Colwyn Bay, a pedestrianised shopping street with planters and Victorian frontages
Station Road · Colwyn Bay
Above the railway

Station Road runs uphill from the station and is where the town does its own business. It was pedestrianised, and it keeps the frontages the resort was built with.

The front in any weather

The Colwyn Bay promenade running away east under a grey sky, wet after rain
The promenade after rain · Colwyn Bay
Two miles, level

The promenade is exposed and has almost no shelter along it, which is why it belongs to people who are moving. It works year-round because it is flat and surfaced, not because it is sheltered.

The civic layer

St John's Uniting Church and the war memorial standing in a public garden at Colwyn Bay
Church, memorial and gardens · Colwyn Bay
Behind the shopping streets

Churches, memorial gardens and civic buildings sit a street back from the shops. This is the part of a resort town that was never built for visitors at all.

Town rhythm

Morning
The shops open on the hill; down on the front it is dog walkers, runners and the tide a long way out.
Through the day
Trains along the coast line every hour or so, cyclists using the promenade as a through-route, and the beach busiest at the Porth Eirias end.
Evening & off-season
Watersports provision at Porth Eirias is seasonal and the beach empties, but the promenade keeps its walkers all winter.

Two halves

The seafront gets rebuilt. The town gets on with it.

Every headline about this place for fifteen years has been about the front: the pier, the sand, the promenade. Up the hill none of that changed anything: the clock still stands where it did, the shops open, the town hall does council business. Visiting well means spending time in both halves rather than only the photographed one.

Plan your time
  • The town clock on Station Road, Colwyn Bay, with shoppers and shopfronts around it
    The town clock, Station Road
  • Red-brick Victorian shopfronts on Station Road, Colwyn Bay
    Shopfronts on Station Road
  • Colwyn Bay Town Hall, a red sandstone civic building on Rhiw Road
    Colwyn Bay Town Hall
  • The jetty at Rhos-on-Sea at low water, small boats resting on the sand beside it
    The jetty at Rhos-on-Sea

Two miles of new promenade, and a high street that never left.

Atlas of Wales

04Plan

Choose the pace that fits your day

  1. Station Road, Colwyn Bay, looking down the pedestrianised shopping street 1

    Start at the station

    Step-free, with lifts to both platforms. The sea is one way, the shops the other.

  2. The restored deck of Colwyn Bay's Victoria Pier running out over the beach 2

    Out onto Victoria Pier

    Three bays, original refurbished ironwork, and the whole bay behind you.

  3. The bay looking east from Porth Eirias, the sea wall running away along the shore 3

    East along the front

    Four hundred metres of rebuilt promenade, with the beach widening as you go.

  4. The Porth Eirias watersports building lit at dusk on the Colwyn Bay promenade 4

    Finish at Porth Eirias

    The watersports plaza, the bistro and the family beach in front of it.

  1. The restored deck of Colwyn Bay's Victoria Pier running out over the beach 1

    Pier first

    Do the short walk out and back before you commit to the long one.

  2. The rebuilt West Promenade at Colwyn Bay with its restored fountain 2

    Turn west

    The widened, raised promenade phase: the fountain, the new surfacing, the Wales Coast Path waymarks.

  3. The jetty at Rhos-on-Sea at low water, small boats on the sand 3

    Rhos jetty

    The promenade’s western end, with boats on the sand at low water and the Little Orme beyond.

  4. Inside St Trillo's Chapel, the altar built over the spring 4

    St Trillo’s Chapel

    Six seats and a spring under the altar. A working chapel; go in quietly.

  5. The town clock on Station Road, Colwyn Bay 5

    Back and up into town

    Return along the front, then through the underpass and up to Station Road.

  1. The bay looking east from Porth Eirias 1

    The front, end to end

    Rhos jetty and the chapel in the west, the pier and Porth Eirias in the middle.

  2. The bowling green and pavilion in Eirias Park, Colwyn Bay 2

    Up into Eirias Park

    Fifty acres inland from Porth Eirias: boating lake, greens, and the stadium.

  3. The town clock on Station Road, Colwyn Bay 3

    Through the underpass to the town

    The one climb of the day, from the promenade up to Station Road and the clock.

  4. The red-brick frontage of Theatr Colwyn on Abergele Road 4

    Theatr Colwyn

    At the top of Abergele Road. Check the programme first if you want to go in.

  5. A path into dense summer woodland at Pwllycrochan Woods 5

    Pwllycrochan Woods

    Keep climbing and the town runs out into woodland with four waymarked circuits.

  6. St John's Uniting Church and the war memorial in a public garden at Colwyn Bay 6

    Back down through the gardens

    The memorial gardens and the civic streets, then the station.

Practical

Plan your visit

Everything you need for arriving and getting around.

Getting here

By train

Colwyn Bay is on the North Wales Coast Line between Crewe and Holyhead, served by Transport for Wales and by Avanti West Coast. The station has two platforms, and lifts give step-free access to both.

Check current times

By car

The A55 North Wales Expressway runs behind the town; the A547 — Conway Road and Abergele Road — is the old coast road through the centre. Conwy County Borough Council runs pay-and-display car parks on the promenade and in the town, and publishes a Colwyn Bay car park map.

View parking details

Practical details

Parking

Conwy County Borough Council runs pay-and-display car parks along the promenade and through the town, and one at Rhos on Sea for the far end of the bay. The seafront car park is the largest; Princes Drive and Douglas Road both have height barriers. Beyond the council’s own list there is the Bay View shopping-centre car park in the middle of town, parking at Porth Eirias and Eirias Park for the east end, and Cayley Promenade at Rhos on Sea.

Colwyn Bay car parks (Conwy County Borough Council)

Events at Eirias Park and the stadium change the picture entirely. Check before an event day, and check the signs when you arrive — charges and restrictions can change.

See them on the map
Once you arrive

Everything on the front is walkable and level from a promenade car park or the station. The one climb in the whole guide is the underpass up into the town centre.

Use Colwyn Bay as a base

Where to go next

Four real Atlas destinations pair with a Colwyn Bay visit; distances are straight-line from the town centre, not driving times.

A landscaped garden with palms and flowerbeds at the Welsh Mountain Zoo, Colwyn Bay

Welsh Mountain Zoo

On the hillside directly above the town, running Britain’s red squirrel breeding programme, and the one place here with a view down the whole bay.

About 0.9 miles west (straight-line) The Little Orme headland seen from Llandudno promenade, its limestone cliffs above the sea

Little Orme

The limestone headland that closes the western end of this bay: the shape you have been walking towards along the whole promenade.

About 3.1 miles north-west (straight-line) Shallow lagoons and reed islands at RSPB Conwy, with wooded hills rising beyond the far shore.

RSPB Conwy

A wetland built from the spoil dug for the Conwy tunnel, with a boardwalk flat enough for a wheelchair.

About 3.5 miles west (straight-line) An elevated view of Conwy Castle's full plan, its round towers and curtain walls beside the River Conwy estuary.

Conwy Castle

Eight towers and a complete battlement circuit above the river, three bridges below.

About 4.2 miles west (straight-line)

On the Atlas

Continue from Colwyn Bay.

Mid-coast, between Llandudno and Abergele.

Open Colwyn Bay on the map

Before you go

A town that decided to start again.

Three bays of pier are a stranger thing to stand on than a whole one ever was.

Open Colwyn Bay on the map Explore the Conwy Atlas