Holyhead — Caergybi in Welsh — sits at the far western tip of Anglesey, and most people pass through on their way to the Irish ferries. But there's reason to linger.
Behind the town rises Holyhead Mountain — modest in height, but the only real hill on the whole island. The coastal cliffs around it are spectacular. At South Stack, the RSPB runs a seabird centre where, during breeding season, you can watch guillemots, razorbills, and puffins nesting on the cliff faces. Choughs — once virtually extinct in England — have been spotted here too, part of a slow recolonisation from their Welsh strongholds.
In the town itself, the parish church of St Cybi sits inside the remarkably complete walls of a small late-Roman fort, Caer Gybi — one of the few Roman fortifications in Britain to survive almost intact. The Victorian engineering of the harbour, including the longest breakwater in the United Kingdom, is a reminder of when Holyhead was the busiest packet port between London and Dublin.