The land at Ty Croes, near Aberffraw, was a British Army and Royal Air Force facility for decades - a coastal training and gunnery range that closed in 1992 when the Cold War defence cuts caught up with it. The Wirral 100 motor racing club spotted the opportunity almost immediately. They started running motorcycle races on the existing perimeter roads and crumbling tarmac, then larger events, then a round of the British Rallycross Championship. In 1997 the facilities were properly upgraded, a small permanent pitlane was installed, and the Motor Sports Association granted the circuit its full racing licence. The original 1.057-mile circuit was rough and ready - quick to lap, hard on suspension, beloved by the regulars and nobody else - and ran for nearly a decade in that form.

In 2006 the owners scrapped most of it. The radical new layout - designed to use the spectacular geography of the cliff edge - introduced four selectable configurations: a 2.100-mile International Circuit using the full track; a 1.550-mile Coastal Circuit running the western, sea-facing half; a 1.200-mile National Circuit; and a 0.800-mile Club Circuit for short events and trackdays. The new design includes long straights that look out over the Irish Sea, banked corners that drop toward the cliff, and a fast right-hander that takes you within metres of a 30-metre drop. One of the straights is named after Tom Pryce, the Ruthin-born Formula One driver who won at Brands Hatch in the 1975 Race of Champions and was killed at the 1977 South African Grand Prix when he struck a marshal who had run across the track. Since 2019 the circuit has hosted the annual Tom Pryce Memorial Trophy, a historic-car event organised by the Historic Sports Car Club.

The combination of cinematic geography and serious lap times has made Trac Môn a favourite location for motoring television. The UK programme Fifth Gear used it regularly for its Shoot Out segment, in which two cars set lap times and the slower one is eliminated; the long straights make a satisfying frame for a tracking shot. More recently, the CBeebies series Catie's Amazing Machines - presented by the rally driver Catie Munnings - has used the circuit as Catie's track, introducing the next generation of British children to motorsport at the same place where their parents may have done their first trackday. Planning consent for a major expansion - additional paddock, garages, and hospitality facilities - was submitted in 2019 and progressed slowly. Trackdays, club championships, rallycross rounds, motorcycle races, drifting events: the calendar runs from spring through to late autumn. The drive from anywhere east takes you across Anglesey, past RAF Valley with its training jets, past Aberffraw with its medieval Welsh royal court - and you arrive at a racing circuit where you can stand on the pit wall and watch a Caterham crest a rise with the Irish Sea behind it stretching toward Ireland. It is, as Peter Williams said, breathtaking.