By James Stone -

Beautiful, sparsely-populated North Wales is a popular destination with holidaymakers and campers drawn by its beaches, views and resorts.

We opted to take a meandering driving tour of the top of the country, from the market town of Ruthin just over the border in Cheshire, to the island of Anglesey in the Irish Sea.

For our first stop we opted for somewhere slightly inland, having found a fabulous place to stay for the night. We arrived at spectacular Ruthin Castle and were delighted to find it as impressive, welcoming and romantic as we had hoped.

Having thoroughly explored the fairytale castle, parts of which were built before 1277, we headed for Ruthin Town, a pretty historic town with charming red sandstone architecture and pleasant places to shop and eat.

From Ruthin, we drove down to the coast and stopped at the attractive seaside town of Abergele for an afternoon, enjoying a paddle in the sea and admiring the ruins of Gwrych Castle, then on to Landudno where we chose to stay for a couple of nights.

Llandudno is one North Wales’s largest resorts and home to a Victorian promenade, lots of shops and bustling attractions. Nearby Conway, with its vast castle, walled old town, scenic river and the quirky 14th century Smallest House in Britain, was a particularly pleasant stop.

We managed to fit in a three hours trip up Great Orme, which looms over the town, taking a circular walk that also includes Llandudno Beach and the local trams. Along the 6km route, we admired the local flora and fauna and the limestone caves once occupied by Stone Age humans.

Across the pretty Menai Bridge, we headed through the Anglesey countryside for a night at the seaside town of Beaumaris, with its medieval castle and Victorian pier, and a trip to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, the place with the longest name in Britain.

Following a day in Anglesey, we took the Llanberis Lake Railway for a leisurely ride on a steam train along a scenic route that provided stunning views of the Snowdonia Mountains and an easy way to see Snowdon, the highest mountain in England and Wales.

I was particularly enchanted with the village of Portmeirion, built in the 1900s by Clough Williams-Ellis on a beautiful peninsula. We stayed at the pricey Hotel Portmeirion by the shore and wandered in the sunlight around the delightful Italianate buildings that provided the backdrop to TV show The Prisoner.

None of the distances around North Wales are of any great size and we were able to drive back from the north west to the north east in a couple of hours, making it very easy to see a lot in a relatively short period of time.

North Wales is home to numerous B&Bs and we found them for the most part to be clean, affordable and hospitable, offering very good breakfasts and lots of local information. Food and drink can be found at each town or village and we chose to spend most of our rest stops in the lovely, cosy pubs along the route.

The area is relaxing and sparsely populated with stunning views, historic houses and castles, great beaches and is very affordable and I would definitely return.