Exploring the Great Orme by Sea Kayak – Liverpool Canoe Club Adventure

Date: 29 December 2025  |  Route: Rhos-on-Sea → Llandudno Pier (lunch) → West Shore → Great Orme cliffs  |  Conditions: Cold, overcast, NE wind (F3)

We set out from Rhos-on-Sea on 29 December 2025—four paddlers, Eamon, Mike, Keith, and Catriona—leaning into a winter day that felt colder than the forecast suggested. The sky was sealed with grey and the light northeasterly, a gentle Force 3, riffled the surface in cat’s paws, just enough to keep us honest without slowing our rhythm. The coastline drew us west, the limestone shoulders of the Little Orme rising ahead, pale and imposing against the flat light. Winter pares everything back to essentials: low colour, clean lines, and that steady pull of the tide against the hull.

Past the Little Orme, the day came alive. Two seal colonies marked our passage—dark shapes on pale rock, whiskered faces lifting as we approached. A few curious seals slipped into the water and ghosted along beside us, surfacing just off the beam to look us over before vanishing in a scatter of bubbles. Their presence softened the cold, made the sea feel companionable, and added that flicker of wonder that keeps us paddling through short days and numb fingers.

We slid around into Llandudno Bay and pulled in at the pier for lunch, the kind of pause that feels longer than it is: steaming flasks, quick bites, shoulders slumping into rest while gulls stitched lazy loops overhead. The town lay quiet in winter mode, but the curve of the bay still had that theatre-room grandeur, a broad amphitheatre of water and promenade. We pushed off again, skirting the edge toward West Shore, where the sea opens, and the character changes—more air, more room to swing a paddle, the Great Orme easing into view like a Limesonte-white prow.

Rounding the headland, the cliffs grew taller and more intricate. The Great Orme’s limestone is a storybook in stone: buttresses and ledges, fissures that peer into shadow, caves with a cool breath at the mouth. Even under an overcast ceiling, the rock held light, its pale faces catching whatever brightness the day offered. We hugged the margins, reading the line and the swell, letting the coast guide our speed. Conversation ebbed and flowed as it does on winter trips—quiet patches, a call-out for a cormorant launch, and a shared laugh when a seal resurfaced with theatrical timing.

The cold never quite left us, but it never soured the day either. It sharpened edges, kept us attentive to hands and faces, to the simple discipline of steady strokes and compact movement. By the time we eased off near West Shore, we’d stitched together the small pleasures that make a winter paddle memorable: brisk air, steady company, wildlife threading the route, and the way limestone meets sea in this corner of North Wales. Seals had followed our kayaks; cliffs had lent us their scale. We had taken a familiar line and found it fresh again.