Ynys Llanddwyn
Ynys Llanddwyn is a tidal island off the southwest coast of Anglesey in North Wales, accessible across the sands at low tide from the beach at Newborough Warren and combining a position of extraordinary natural beauty with deep historical and cultural significance as the site associated with St Dwynwen, the Welsh patron saint of lovers. The island is backed by the vast dune system of the Newborough National Nature Reserve and looks west across the Menai Strait and Caernarfon Bay toward the mountains of the LlÅ·n Peninsula in a setting of exceptional coastal and mountain scenery.
The association with St Dwynwen, whose feast day of 25 January has become the Welsh equivalent of Valentine's Day, gives the island a romantic significance that draws visitors on Dydd Santes Dwynwen as well as throughout the year. The ruined chapel on the island marks the site of the early Christian community associated with the saint, and the holy well whose waters were once used to predict the fidelity of lovers or the health of a proposed marriage adds a further layer of medieval religious tradition to the island.
The lighthouse at the tip of the island, built in 1845 to guide vessels through the Menai Strait, provides a navigational focal point and the striking visual element that appears in most photographs of Ynys Llanddwyn. The ruins of the traditional cottages of the lighthouse keepers, now preserved as part of the island's heritage, add a nineteenth-century domestic dimension to the earlier religious history.
The Newborough Warren National Nature Reserve surrounding the island access route is one of the finest coastal sand dune systems in Wales, its extensive fixed and semi-fixed dunes supporting exceptional botanical diversity including many orchid species, and the beach at Newborough is among the most beautiful in north Wales.