Trearddur Bay Sailing Club has more than a thousand members and opens for one month a year. August. The rest of the year the clubhouse sits boarded up above a half-empty beach, the dinghies pulled up under their covers, the slipway empty. Then, suddenly, the second week of August: the boats appear, the bunting goes up, the regatta calendar fills, and a small Welsh seaside village briefly becomes one of the busiest sailing centres on the Irish Sea. By September it is all gone again. The pattern - intense seasonal activity followed by quiet - has shaped Trearddur for over a century. The lifeboat crew, the hotelkeepers, the surf schools, the chip shops, the golf club: nearly everyone's calendar is keyed to the same few weeks. The cliffs and the cove will be here in February. The people will not.
The name has shifted through the centuries - Treffyarddr, Tre Iarthur, Trefarthur, Trearddur from 1749 onwards - but all of them mean the settlement of Iarddur, an otherwise obscure medieval Welshman whose homestead presumably stood somewhere near today's village. The bay was called Porth y Capel, bay of the chapel, after a long-lost early Christian site; the dunes behind the beach were called Towyn y Capel for the same reason. In 2003, archaeologists excavated the dune at the centre of the beach and found an ancient burial ground dating back well before Iarddur ever set foot here. Like most of the Welsh coast, Trearddur has been steadily anglicised - the 2011 census found 44% of the community born in England, and the Welsh language presence is much smaller than it was a century ago. The community as a whole numbered 1,686 in 2011, less than half its summer population.
The main beach is a wide arc of pale sand, sheltered by low cliffs at either end and ending in scattered rock outcrops; Porth Diana, the smaller cove to the south, has clearer water and is popular with shallow scuba divers. Both are recognised as some of the better swimming and water-sports beaches on Anglesey. Cod Rocks - the cluster of low ledges at the south end of the main beach - have been quietly killing swimmers and capsized sailors for as long as anyone has counted; the Trearddur Bay RNLI lifeboat, in service since 1967, has made more than one of its medal-winning rescues there. Surfing works on the right combination of southwest swell and offshore wind; on a clean autumn day a small but committed crew of local surfers can be found in the bay long after the holiday traffic has gone home. Kayaks, paddleboards, kitesurfers, sea anglers, jet skis - everyone shares the same square mile of water in August, with varying degrees of harmony.
Above the beach, Trearddur is small enough to walk around in twenty minutes. Two hotels overlook the water: the Trearddur Bay Hotel, large and white, and the smaller Beach Motel. There is one general shop, a garage, a play area, a football pitch where Trearddur Bay FC's four senior teams play in the local leagues, and a string of pubs and restaurants - the Driftwood, Ocean's Edge, Seacroft, Sea Shanty, Farrell's Bar - that fill up on summer evenings. Holyhead Golf Club runs an 18-hole course on the headland above. The Anglesey Coastal Path passes through the village, heading north toward Porth Dafarch, South Stack and the RSPB seabird cliffs, or south toward Rhoscolyn and the tip of the island. In autumn the village hosts the Anglesey Oyster and Welsh Produce Festival, one of the better food events in north Wales. And then November arrives, the wind shifts back to the southwest, the surfers thin out, and Trearddur returns to being a small village on a wild coast - until next August.
Trearddur sits at 53.283N, 4.617W on the west coast of Holy Island, about 2 nm south of Holyhead. The wide sandy arc of Trearddur Bay is unmistakable from the air, with the smaller Porth Diana cove just south. Cod Rocks form a dark cluster at the south end of the main beach. The Holyhead Golf Club course occupies the headland above the village. Nearest airfield is RAF Valley (EGOV) 4 nm southeast; Caernarfon (EGCK) 17 nm south-southeast. Holyhead Mountain (220 m) lies 2 nm to the north - expect orographic effects in northwesterly winds. South Stack Lighthouse and the seabird cliffs are 3 nm north along the coast; Trefignath neolithic chambered tomb is 1 km east of the village.