Here on Anglesey we love cyclists. We love the way they help to keep our roads quiet and clear of traffic. The way they make themselves a part of our countryside instead of just seeing it as a green blur.
Cyclists seem to love us back. In fact, they just can’t keep away. There are only nine
National Cycle Routes in the whole of the UK - and two of them cross Anglesey.
National Route 8 from Cardiff and National Route 5 from Reading both meander delightfully through our lanes to finish in Holyhead and we’ve devised
four circular routes of our own to intersect with them.
They don’t have numbers, just names. Nico (Goldfinch), Giach (Snipe), Hebog (Falcon) and Telor (Warbler). Each named after the sort of bird you might expect to see on your travels through our wetlands and along our hedgerows.
We also spent five years and £2 million creating linear
Lôn Las Cefni, which joins the two national routes together. Traffic-free and flat for virtually all of its 13 miles, it’s especially popular with families.
“You see so much wildlife – grey mullet feeding in the river, kingfishers and swans flying over,” says Richard Owen of Llangefni. “It’s very peaceful. You haven’t got the traffic and you can let the children go and explore.”
Pretty soon, in fact, we had just about the whole island covered with a network of cycle routes. But a piece of the jigsaw was missing – the northern coast. And since this was one of the quietest and most beautiful spots on Anglesey, we thought this was rather a shame.
So we’ve created a brand-new 34-mile circular tour. The National Cycle Network calls it Route 566. But we call it
Lôn Las Copr, or the Copper Trail, which we reckon has a bit more of a ring to it.