A beautiful seaside town in Wales is much-loved by tourists but not many can properly pronounce it’s name. Pwllheli is a coastal market town in the Llyn Peninsula, northwest Wales.
The town’s difficult name is often mispronounced by visitors, who say it as “p-well-heli” and “poo-thelly”. The real pronunciation is actually “poo-ll-helly”. The word means ‘salt water basin’.
Pwllheli sits on the Afon Erch River and grew around the harbour’s shipbuilding and fishing industries as well as the granite quarry in nearby Gimlet Rock.
The town has lots of beautiful beaches, as well as art galleries, shops and a sailing and watersports centre. There are lots of surrounding villages and towns to enjoy, including Llanbedrog, Morfa Nefyn, Abersoch, Criccieth and Aberdaron.
Lying on the beautiful North Wales coast, the town is home to Pwllheli beach, which reviewers on TripAdvisor have lauded as ‘stunning and underrated’, as well as a ‘beautiful natural coastline’.
If the beach isn’t really your thing, then just head 40 minutes inland for a different kind of holiday.
Pwllheli is s a great place for hikers to visit as it lies in the Llyn Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Eryri National Park (Snowdonia).
Just down the road from Pwllheli is Snowdon, the tallest moutain in Wales. For the more intrepid holidaymakers, a hike up the mountain is just a 40 minute drive from the pretty town.
However, Snowdon also has a mountain railway that will take visitors up the mountain if the climb is slightly too imposing. There are two different options, the Traditional Diesel Service and the Heritage Steam Experience.
The diesel service costs £36 return for the two hour journey, with a 30 minute stop, while the steam service costs £55 return for the two and a half hour journey with a 30 minute stop at the summit.
Pwllheli has some places to stay and lovely places to eat but there are more available in the nearby area.
Tremfan Hall is the highest rated restaurant in Pwllheli, according to TripAdvisor, with a perfect five star score on 557 reviews. The restaurant serves traditional Welsh and British food and customers have hailed it as ‘outstanding’.
One happy customer wrote: “We just had the most amazing meal. Every course was excellent. The mussels starter. The tomahawk chop fantastic. The turkey lunch was so tasty. Excellent.”
Another said: “Just had our first visit to Tremfan Hall and wow, just wow wow wow. Cannot fault anything. From the moment we arrived we were made to feel so welcome and the food was just amazing.
“All the staff were a credit, so professional but friendly too. Thank you for such an amazing evening. We will definitely be back.”
Those wishing to visit the town can do so by train on the Cambrian Coast Railway with services from Birmingham, Shrewsbury and Caernarfon.
There are also buses from other Welsh towns and it is just off the A497 and the A499.
