100 British Bus Routes: Route 13
Prestatyn to Llandudno
15 July 2023
ABOVE: Arriva Wales 3167 (CX14 BYD), a VDL SB200 Wrightbus Pulsar, passes through the centre of Llanddulas on route 13 towards Prestatyn.
All pictures in this article were taken on Thursday 15th June 2023.
All pictures in this article were taken on Thursday 15th June 2023.
Operator: Arriva Wales
Runs: Daily
(No service on Sunday evenings / limited weekday evening service between Old Colwyn and Prestatyn)
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 50 minutes
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: four buses
Off-peak journey time: approx. 90 minutes
Estimated route length: 25 miles
Runs: Daily
(No service on Sunday evenings / limited weekday evening service between Old Colwyn and Prestatyn)
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 50 minutes
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: four buses
Off-peak journey time: approx. 90 minutes
Estimated route length: 25 miles
I first visited Prestatyn in 1993, when I stayed at the Pontin's Holiday Camp just outside the town centre. I remember immediately recognising the camp, as soon as I saw the gates for the first time, as the location of the 1973 film "Holiday On The Buses".
It's a lovely town, Prestatyn. Sitting on the northern coast of North Wales, its beach looks out onto the Irish Sea. Many people heading out of Merseyside or the Wirral, who are looking for some seaside fun, position themselves a little further west, in Rhyl. Those people are missing out; Prestatyn is a far classier place in my view.
Mind you, there's not much going on when I arrive just before 0900 on a weekday morning in term time. Most of the cafes and businesses have yet to open, and a breakfast stop is tricky to find (although the place I end up at is delightful, with piped music playing a selection of Italian operatic classics).
The Centennial Clock in the High Street commemorates the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Prestatyn Urban District Council in 1896:
A bus station has been built on the Ffordd Pendyffryn, the road adjacent to the High Street, in decent proximity to both the Town Centre and the railway station. It's a simple, four-stop arrangement and all buses serving the town call in here.
ABOVE: Prestatyn bus station. The hills behind are part of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which runs along the border between England and North East Wales.
I'm catching Arriva Wales route 13 to Llandudno. The direct way through would be to take one of the variants of Arriva Wales route 11 (they carry A, C, F, M & X suffixes at least) to Rhyl, and change there to route 12, which is a major companion to our journey today, as we shall see. The 13 takes a slightly more convoluted routing.
According to both traveline and the Arriva website, the 13 leaves from Stand 3 of Prestatyn Bus Station, but there's no timetable for the route in that shelter. There are real-time displays but they're switched off, so no clues there either.
I later discover the timetable is posted in Stand 4, where someone has changed the printed "3" to a "4" by hand. A shame that whatever local arrangement has prompted this change cannot be updated in online data.
ABOVE: The timetable in stop 4 at Prestatyn bus station. Note the hand-amendment to the stand number - all official datasets show stop 3.
The circa 90-minute end-to-end journey time makes a conventional service frequency unviable, so buses run every 50 minutes (200 minutes to do a full round trip). I'm waiting (at stand 3) for the 0950 departure, having arrived in good time. There's no sign of the bus at 0955, and no-one waiting at stand 3 (well I know why not now)!
More worryingly, a check of BusTimes.org does not show a vehicle anywhere in the vicinity. The other three vehicles on the route are all where one would expect them to be, but mine is not showing. Has it been cancelled?
Being an Arriva service, it's not easy to find out online whether the service has been cancelled but, as I start trying to navigate the dreadful Arriva website, the bus appears and pulls into stand 4, where half a dozen people, "in the know" unlike me, have been waiting.
ABOVE: Arriva Wales 2655 (CX07 CUJ), a VDL SB200 Wrightbus Pulsar, arrives at Prestatyn Bus Station
It's a VDL SB200 Wrightbus Pulsar of 2007 vintage, and seven of us are on board as we leave around nine minutes late. We start in a south-westerly direction, heading inland, but not very far before we find our first set of temporary traffic lights. For us, getting through these roadworks is straight-forward, but there's a noticeably larger queue of traffic in the opposite direction, which probably explains why the bus was late coming in.
It's a blisteringly hot day, but fortunately the air flows well around this single-decker workhorse to keep everyone cool.
We come to the village of Meliden. Prehistoric tools found here, showing evidence of early human habitation in the area, have led scientists to conclude that Prestatyn has been occupied since prehistoric times.
We're only a couple of miles inland and it's lovely countryside:
We come to the Town Centre of Rhuddlan. I am on the wrong side of the bus to get a photo of the castle, a 13th-Century stronghold. But the High Street is lovely:
A few miles on is Bodelwyddan, home to over sixty listed buildings. But it's the Glan Clwyd Hospital that catches my attention. We do a circuit of the car park and it's notable that said car park is absolutely rammed with vehicles. Every official space is taken, but cars are also parked on the verges, and on the ends of designated rows of parking, which are officially part of the road.
It looks like a car factory... And it's only just gone ten in the morning! Clearly this hospital needs a public transport plan!
As we work our way through Bodelwyddan, we get a distant view of St Margaret's Church, which is nicknamed the Marble Church (go to Google Streetview here for a close-up). It's a Decorated Gothic Style parish church with a spire that rises to 202 feet.
From this point on, we are never far from the A55 Expressway road, which runs all the way from Chester to Holyhead, and swallows up the miles for longer-distance drivers. It means the roads we use are clear and fast as well, so considerable progress can be made at a decent pace.
We are introduced to route 12 (Rhyl to Llandudno) for the first time at Abergele. We will be together for the next few miles. Route 12 must be one of the most frequent bus services in this region, running every 12 minutes on weekdays.
We're back on the coast now, heading broadly west. A little further along is the North Wales Business Park in Groeslwyd, and we pull off the main road to serve it. It's a timing point on route 12 but not on the 13. A pair of 12s (one each way) are at the stop as we pass; one is awaiting its departure time. The time stamp on my photograph suggests that the 13 is about 14 minutes late at this point.
ABOVE: Two Arriva Wales ADL Enviro400s meet at the North Wales Business Park, where buses do a brief double-run off the main road (which is behind). The bus on the left, right on time, is the 1036 to Llandudno, whilst waiting time just behind is the 1037 to Rhyl.
We come to Llanddulas. This village lies beneath the limestone hill of Cefn-yr-Ogof. We pass several quarries in this area; quarrying of limestone was formerly the main industry of the village.
According to legend, a cave on the nearby mountain of Pen y Cefn was once the abode of the Devil, until the people of Llanddulas performed an exorcism at the cave to drive him away.
Llanddulas Village Hall is quite striking too:
Still clinging close to the North Wales Expressway, and the coast behind it, we are entering the environs of Colwyn Bay. The town has an impressive war record from the Second World War, where it was the headquarters of the Ministry of Food. Colwyn also supported the war effort by becoming a significant location for the diamond cutting and polishing industry, which was used to help fund the war effort. Today, tourism is the main industry and, on Miners Lane in the suburb of Old Colwyn, we get a marvellous view of the Bay.
We're about half-way along the North Wales coast now. The bus does not go down to the Promenade, but stays on the Conway Road through the town (and that's how the road name is spelt on my map, even though it is the road to Conwy).
We part company with the 12 after Colwyn Bay. The 12 is taking a north-western trajectory, clinging close to the coast for the direct route to Llandudno, whilst we are taking a south-westerly course via Mochdre, Dolwyd and Llandudno Junction.
The station at Llandudno Junction is an important one, as Llandudno itself is slightly on a limb geographically. The Junction station is a crossroads (or should that be a crossrail?) between the east-west Chester to Holyhead route and the north-south Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog line. It makes for a busy station serving a wide range of destinations in this relatively remote coastal spot.
As trains heading west leave the Junction, they cross the River Conwy via the Telford Suspension Bridge; at the other side of which is Conwy Castle, a 13th-Century estuary fortress. I manage to capture a view from the east side of the river.
Looking like it's at the end of this road, Conwy Castle is actually on the opposite side of the River Conwy
The 13 does not cross the river, but heads north along its eastern bank, through the town of Deganwy. The views out from here across the river mouth are spectacular, but are beyond my abilities to capture a clear picture from the right-hand side of what is now a busy bus. Thank heavens for Google Streetview!
As one looks north-west across the Irish Sea, the next land mass is the Isle of Man, about 67 miles away. Our route turns north-eastwards for the final leg into Llandudno, where I leave in Mostyn Street. We have arrived about 10 minutes late. The bus just has a couple more stops to go to the end of the line in Gloddaeth Street.
ABOVE: Journey's end (almost): Arriva Wales 2655 (CX07 CUJ) drops off passengers in Mostyn Street, Llandudno, at the end of the run from Prestatyn. The destination display IS working, but is just not compatible with my camera at this moment, it seems.
Llandudno is the largest seaside resort in Wales, and as early as 1861 was being called 'the Queen of the Welsh Watering Places'. It's well-known in transport circles for its cable-hauled funicular tramway to the summit of the Great Orme, a limestone headland just north of the town itself.
In fact there are two separate funiculars - one has to change at a stop called, appropriately, Halfway.
Back down in the town centre, there's a three-day Victorian Fair every May, but there's plenty of life even on a 'normal' term-time weekday (albeit a very hot one), and the streets and town cafes are busy with holidaymakers.
Mostyn Street, Llandudno
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Sadly, it doesn't appear that the maintenance of bus stop information along the 13 route is very good, and I see many neglected bus stops along the way - Prestatyn Bus Station seems to have been the exception. Most stops still carry "covid" posters, because timings are "changing more often in response to Welsh Government Coronavirus restrictions". That presumably explains the state of this one in Mostyn Street, which looks awful with empty panels and graffiti... The lower poster in this case says "please wear a mask and socially distance where possible" (when did "to socially distance" become a verb anyway)? |
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I have a few minutes before my next bus, to reflect on what a lovely place this is, and on how the 13 is a lovely way to get here. Or to the hospital in Bodelwyddan, if you don't want to worry about parking.
In Mostyn Street, Llandudno, Arriva Wales 4545 (CX14 BXH, left) is an ADL Enviro400, working route 12 from Rhyl. To its right is Arriva Wales 675 (CX58 EUC), an Optare Solo on route 25 to Eglwys-bach, about seven miles inland / south from here.
A view of Llandudno Pier (background), with Great Orme behind it.