Walking the Conwy town walls

Conwy's walls are the reason to come here rather than to Caernarfon or Beaumaris, and most visitors do them in the wrong order. The instinct is to buy a castle ticket first, spend ninety minutes on the towers, and then walk the walls on tired legs with the light going. Do it the other way round. The wall walk is free, it takes under an hour and a half, and it is the thing that makes the castle legible when you get to it.

What you are actually walking on

Roughly 1.3km of curtain wall, 21 surviving towers and three gateways, put up between 1283 and 1287 in the same building programme as the castle, under Master James of St George. The figure usually quoted for the building programme is around £15,000, which in the 1280s was an extraordinary amount of money for a town that did not exist yet. Sources differ on whether that covers the walls alone or the walls and the castle together, so read it as an order of magnitude. What matters when you are up there is that the ring is unbroken. Most walled towns in Britain have a gate, a fragment behind a supermarket, a length of rubble in a park. Conwy has the circuit, and the circuit still decides where the town stops: the streets inside were laid out to fit it rather than the other way about.

Cadw manages the walls, entry is free, and they are open all year during reasonable daylight hours. Together with the castle they form one component of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1986 as Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd. That inscription covers four properties, not one: Beaumaris, Harlech, and Caernarfon and Conwy with their town walls. It is worth being precise about, because a lot of writing about Conwy quietly upgrades the town to a World Heritage Site of its own.

One section is closed, so plan two stretches

Before you plan a full loop, check Cadw's own notice. A short section between the Watch Tower and the Wing Gate is closed while the safety of that stretch is improved, with stronger railings and protective mesh going in. Cadw has targeted reopening for Easter 2027. Until then the walk is two open stretches rather than one continuous ring, and the practical effect is that you drop back to street level partway round and rejoin. It is not a problem, it is just not what the map on the interpretation board implies.

The route worth taking

Start at the Lower Gate on the quay, where the wall runs right down to the water and the Smallest House is wedged against it. Climb from there and work westward and upward: the ground rises steadily toward the Upper Gate at the western end, which is where the best of it is. From the high stretch above the Upper Gate you are looking down onto the roofs of the whole town, out over the estuary, across to the Great Orme, and back along the ridge of Mynydd y Dref behind you. That view, for nothing, is the single best thing Conwy gives away.

Come off at the western end and you are on Mount Pleasant, a couple of minutes from Lancaster Square. Come off at the eastern end and you are back near the castle gate, which is the moment to buy your ticket, because you now know exactly what you are looking at.

What to know before you climb

Cadw's warnings for the wall walk are not boilerplate. The sections are entered and left by modern steps, the historic stonework underfoot is uneven, the terrain gets steeper as you go west, there are places with low headroom, there is a genuine risk of falls from height, and birds nest in the fabric. There is no lighting on the rampart at all, so this is a daylight route only, and in high wind it is unpleasant rather than exhilarating.

Dogs are not permitted on the wall walk. Not discouraged: not permitted, because the rampart is too narrow to pass another walker safely, let alone a dog. If you are travelling with one, Bodlondeb Woods and the open ground on Mynydd y Dref are both minutes away and both far better for it.

It is also not step-free and not passable with a wheelchair or a pushchair. If that rules it out, the compensation is that a lot of the walls read beautifully from below: the stretch along Town Ditch Road and the outside of the Upper Gate give you the scale without the stairs, and both are level pavement.

Pairing it with the rest of the day

An hour and a half on the walls, then Conwy Castle, is a comfortable morning. Cadw's admission for the castle at the 1 June to 31 August 2026 band is £13.50 for an adult, £12.10 for a senior, £9.40 for a junior or student and £43.30 for a family of two adults and up to three children, with 5 per cent off for booking online and free entry for members, disabled visitors and under-fives. Access from the visitor centre into the castle is a steep path of roughly 50 metres with several sets of steps, so the two together are a lot of stairs in one morning.

Then eat. Anything you want on the High Street or Castle Street is under five minutes from either end of the wall walk, which is the whole advantage of a town that fits inside a ring of stone.