South Anglesey

Ask most people what brought them to Anglesey and the answer involves a beach. Chances are it was a south-coast beach: Newborough Warren's miles of Atlantic-facing sand and the tidal drama of Llanddwyn Island; Rhosneigr's west-facing bay that catches every swell and every wind; the enormous dune systems behind Aberffraw that have been shifting for 6,000 years. The south is where the island earns its reputation for beaches, and it earns it emphatically.

Rhosneigr is the surf village — kitesurfers, a good deli, the Oyster Catcher perched above the dunes with one of the best sunset terraces on the island. Funsport and Gecko Surf run year-round from the beach; the BKSA-accredited schools draw beginners from across the UK. The village is low-key and unpretentious in the way that places which don't need to try tend to be.

Brynsiencyn and the surrounding farmland hold two of the island's most important visitor attractions: Halen Môn, the sea salt that appears on the menus of Michelin-starred restaurants from London to Tokyo and can be tasted at source in the Menai Strait-side production facility; and Anglesey Sea Zoo, Britain's largest natural seawater aquarium, where native marine life is displayed in tanks with views back across the Strait to Caernarfon Castle. The south also holds the closest thing Anglesey has to a destination restaurant: The Marram Grass, hidden in the lanes near Newborough Forest, with a kitchen-garden philosophy and cooking that punches well above the relaxed farmhouse setting.