Travel — 26. Apr 25

Exploring North Wales in March 2025 — Gear, Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Betws-y-Coed (01 / 05)

A photographic recap of our five days exploring North Wales in March 2025. In this part (01 / 05), I'll share the gear I took with me, and we explore Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Betws-y-Coed.

In March 2025, my wife and I visited North Wales for the third time since living in the UK. Here's a little (photographic) recap of our five days exploring this beautiful part of the world. Spoiler: It didn't even rain once!

“Exploring North Wales in March 2025” is a multipart series. This is part 1 out of 5.

Gear

First, let's discuss the photography gear I took with me on this 5-day adventure. If you are not interested in gear talk, feel free to skip ahead.

Digital Gear

I took two digital cameras with on this trip. My brand new Z6III with the Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8 and my Ricoh GR IIIx. I used the Nikon for hiking and landscape photos and the GR for photos around cities and towns, as well as for some casual walks. To record some videos, I also brought a DJI Action 4 along.

Analogue Gear

On the analogue side, I brought three film cameras with me. My main film camera for this trip was the FUJI GS645W, which is a medium format camera with a fixed 45 mm f/5.6 lens. I adore this camera and I think it is perfect for travelling light, hiking and landscape photos. Besides that, I brought my Olympus XA2 and my PENTAX 17. In terms of film stocks, I focused on medium format Portra 400 and 35 mm Kodak Ultra Max for this trip.

Accessories

I also brought several accessories, like my Peak Design Tripod, a light meter (which I haven't used once), a small LED light (also not used once), some mounting options for the action camera, a bunch of filters and, of course, some spare batteries and memory cards.

Getting There

We started our journey at London Euston station, from where we took the direct Avanti West Coast Service to Liverpool Lime Street. The train journey took around 2:20 hours and was super smooth. We paid around £50 per person for the return journey, which is not too bad. After we arrived in Liverpool at around 9pm, we walked straight from the station to our hotel and called it a day.

Day 1: Liverpool - Colwyn Bay - Llandudno - Betws-y-Coed

Before we collected our rental car, we got some nice bagels for breakfast in Liverpool. From the bagel place, we walked to the rental car station and picked up our car — a Mazda CX5. Now, we were ready to begin our journey to Wales.

Our first planned stop was Colwyn Bay, which is a 1:30-hour drive from Liverpool. We walked along the seafront for a little while and, most importantly, visited the beautiful paste-coloured Pier Bae Colwyn.

While the seafront and pier are gorgeous, it was unfortunate to see so many empty stores within the town centre. We grabbed a coffee and continued our journey to Llandudno.

Llandudno is a beautiful coastal town with a great seafront, pier, and landscape around it. We started with a walk along the promenade and I took quite a few photos of the shelters which were along the way.

After our little walk, we started driving along the Marine Drive Toll Road, which is a 5-mile toll road with very nice views and access to the Great Omre summit.

After finishing the Marine Drive, we figured it was time to drive to our Bed & Breakfast in Betws-y-Coed. We now stayed in the beautiful Summer Hill House for the third time.