JOANNA SCANLAN

Where should a family in rural North Wales go for their summer holidays? North Wales of course! It was true for us in the 1960s – it’s a truism today.

Each summer for the first 10 years of my life we would drive the 50-odd miles from Flintshire along the North Wales riviera coast road, tooting our horn through the tunnels and landing up at my grandmother Peggy’s midcentury modern bungalow at Rhoscolyn.

The glorious picture windows looked out on to acres of wild rocky headland to Borthwen beach on Holy Island, Anglesey and across to the majesty of the Snowdonia mountains dropping into the Llŷn Peninsula.

I wasn’t surprised to hear that this same perfect beach reputedly later became a courting hot spot for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during his posting at nearby RAF Valley. The beach is an idyllic natural harbour, sandy and often calm – my father taught us how to swim here until we were strong enough to flail our arms and reach the Gwylanod islands at the end of the bay. We had a wooden boat and would check the lobster pots daily, though I was sad when they were dropped into the boiling water for supper.

My brother, and I had a secret castle hewn from rock at the easterly end of the beach from which we spied bobs of seals, almighty jellyfish pulsing beneath the surface, choughs and cormorants darting for fish. It was a bucket and spade experience outstripped by the wild. We learnt to respect the

savagery of nature when to our horror a child from a family we knew was sucked by a rogue wave from the headland and drowned. Some days we were housebound by sea frets, visibility down to a few feet, but mostly the days were sun-kissed and the evenings spent in a comforting ritual of my mother daubing calamine lotion on to burnt skin.

To cool down we would wander up to the caravan park café, buy a lolly and – if we could scrounge an extra sixpence – put The Rolling Stones’ Honky

Tonk Women on the jukebox. We were in Rhoscolyn when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon, though not allowed to stay up to watch it. Instead, we drove to Portmeirion to buy a commemorative mug.

Anglesey is rich in ancient myth, a place of mystery. I recall the sheer incalculable fun of those holidays, so much so that the habit of an annual British summer trip is one I’ve never missed.