The Pier
Beaumaris Pier reaching into the Menai Strait — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Beaumaris Pier is not one of the great pleasure piers of the Victorian seaside — it is something better: a modest working pier from 1846 pointing straight at the mountains. Stand at the end and you have the whole panorama — the Menai Strait streaming past, Snowdonia stacked on the far shore, and Puffin Island low on the horizon to the east.
This is also where the boat trips leave from: kiosks for the two operators, Seacoast Safaris and Starida, stand by the pier entrance in season.
Doing Nothing, Well
The pier is the town’s slow spot. Children crab off the boardwalk all summer (a line, some bacon and patience are the full kit); everyone else eats ice cream from Red Boat and watches the yachts. The Green and the seafront promenade run either side, and the Anglesey Coastal Path passes the pier gates — turn east and Penmon Point is a couple of hours’ glorious walking away.
During the Menai Strait Regattas in late July and early August the view from the pier is the best free show in Wales — fleets of sails working the tide right below you.
A Short Pier History
The pier went up in 1846, when steamers from Liverpool made Beaumaris a fashionable watering place, and was rebuilt and extended over the years as the resort trade ebbed and flowed. It has survived storms and centuries better than most Welsh piers — shorter than the great pleasure piers, but with a working dignity they lack, still doing its original job: landing passengers for the town and giving everyone else somewhere perfect to stand. The lifeboat station alongside continues an equally long tradition; the RNLI shop in season is worth your loose change.
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