Part 2: Holyhead
Part 2: Holyhead
We continue our journey across the Irish Sea by docking in Holyhead, nestled in the coast of Holy Island on the North Wales coast. Download the Port Places app on your Apple or Android phone, open the menu and press 'Find More' to see the list of featured experiences, and read on!
The town is best known for its role as a major seaport and it boasts an over 200-year old ferry link with Ireland. Holyhead remained a comparatively small fishing village until around 1800, growing from Neolithic settlement to Roman camp to site of Saint Cybi's church. The town grew around this site and the Welsh name of Holyhead, Caergybi, reflects its Roman and early Christian origins. There is much more to see and learn for those who do not rush through Holyhead, but stop and stay a while under the watchful eye of Mynydd Twr, Holyhead Mountain.
The Port Places app captures this rich history with two overlapping experiences.
This experience draws on the creative, film and heritage material of the project to set out a trail of stories stretching from Dublin Port to Holyhead. It covers the ferry crossing between Dublin Port and Holyhead, including creative work, stories, interviews and poetry. It tells the story of sights and sounds of the Irish and Welsh coasts, stories of war and loss, images of the Irish Sea captured in documentary films and many of the overlapping accounts and events that have clustered around the crossing over centuries.
The experience can begin at either end of the route, and can be downloaded in advance of your journey. Once downloaded, no data is needed to read the text, look at the images and listen to the audio while you undertake your ferry trip.
The three Ports, Past and Present crossing experiences on Port Places bring the past to life by showing that the Irish Sea and its long frequented crossings are not focused on a single topic, but cover every aspect of human life at sea and on land. They present personal accounts together with large-scale tragedies, traces of ancient histories together with the upheavals of recent decades.
When arriving in Holyhead on the ferry, the ocean teems with stories of shared travel, loss and family across the Irish Sea.
The Nature Trail in the Holyhead Breakwater Country Park is just over a mile long, with varying terrain and should take around 40 minutes to complete. In this post-industrial park, land blasted from the flank of Mynydd Twr (Holyhead Mountain) to create Holyhead port's breakwater, has given way to a biodiverse landscape of lakes, animals, insects and birdlife, complete with children's playground and stunning views of the rocky coastline.
This experience will help to guide you round the trail and give you interesting information about each stop. You can get additional information sheets about each stop from the Information Centre in the Park. Along the way you will walk through different habitats in the Park and see many species of plant and animal, many more than the ones mentioned in this app experience.
We hope that you enjoy your visit to Breakwater Country Park and see lots of interesting things.
In the next section of this exhibit, we travel down the coast to the twin towns of Fishguard and Goodwick on the Pembrokeshire coast. Browse the list of featured experiences on the Port Places app to learn more!
A third experience for Holyhead, the town trail, is forthcoming in 2023.