Menai Bridge

Menai Bridge (Porthaethwy) is where most visitors first arrive on Anglesey, and it rewards those who slow down rather than rush through. The town owes its English name to the Menai Suspension Bridge — Thomas Telford's 1826 masterpiece, for 100 years the longest suspension bridge in the world — which still carries the A5 across the Strait on the same elegant catenary it was built to. Standing beneath the towers and watching the tidal race of the Swellies is genuinely humbling.

The town itself has grown into something worth exploring. A small high street holds independent shops, cafés, and the waterfront Dylan's restaurant — floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Strait, a menu anchored in local Welsh produce, and one of the most reliable brunches on the island. The Church of Saint Mary sits above the village with excellent views south toward Bangor and the Carneddau mountains.

For the curious: the Britannia Bridge — the rail crossing one mile south — was built by Robert Stephenson in 1850 as a tubular wrought-iron structure. It burned in 1970 and was rebuilt with a road deck above; the stone lions that guard its approaches remain from the original. Both bridges together form one of the most significant pieces of engineering heritage in Wales.

Menai Bridge is also the closest mainland-accessible point for visiting Plas Newydd (National Trust), the 18th-century house and garden with a Rex Whistler mural and views back toward Snowdonia, about 2 miles south along the A4080.