I am up in North Wales to see the folks. A few days of filling time with ‘drives out’ and stops at tea shops with my Aunty Nancy. The homestead is in Llanfairfechan on the coast near Conwy and across the water is Anglesey. ‘Lets go to Anglesey’ I suggest and I give Nancy a leg up into the passenger seat of my 4×4 from where she peers imperiously.
Most of Anglesey’s coastline is an area of outstanding natural beauty. It is teeming with wildlife but my overriding memories are of the internal barrenness as you take the new road to Holyhead, the ferries, RAF Valley and the Nuclear reactor. I thought it would be nice to have a proper look.
As we head over the bridge 
spanning the Menai Straits a helicopter whizzes past. ‘Oh look it’s Wills’ she says. I shall hear this a lot, every helicopter in fact. ‘They went to the cinema in Llandudno Junction. He wanted to see Terminator but he hadn’t booked. They had to see Bridesmaids’.Bless.
‘and she shops at Waitrose’. The fact that Anglesey has a Waitrose shocks me more than Kate shopping there.
We park up on the front in Beaumaris – £2.50. ‘You didn’t need to pay before Wills and Kate’ she tells me and we wander into the pretty village which is teeming with holidaymakers. We stare at a loud Liverpudlian, white vest, tattoo’s and a cross dangling over his pot belly. Shorts, socks, boots. ‘You didn’t have that sort before Wills and Kate neither’.
Having wandered around shops selling paintings of sheep and driftwood objets for a weeks wage we settle in for some tea and bara brith in Beau’s teashop. A tiny place plastered with pictures of the Hairy Bikers visit years earlier. They get everywhere.
Beaumaris, Anglesey
Over tea in china cups and saucers she gives me the impression that things have changed on Anglesey since the Royal arrival. That the traditional North Wales antipathy to the Royal family has dissipated and that it has gained some sort of exotic-ness. ‘It’s got expensive too and I am sure house prices have soared’. Oops, plans for a non-busmans holiday are now stuffed. I am curious, have Wills and Kate bolstered not only a tourist industry but a housing market too? My cousins tell me that on the mainland prices haven’t recovered since 2008, perhaps Anglesey has bucked the trend. I had seen an Estate Agent’s in Menai Bridge. Dafydd Hardy- Fine & Country. My Aunt tells me he knew my father, or that some convoluted family relationship exists in the way it only can in North Wales or possibly Norfolk. I leave a message.
The jetty at Beaumaris, Anglesey
Nancy tells me the Royals have a big remote farmhouse near to RAF Valley, she knows where but I shan’t mention for fear of risking my OBE for services to house-hunting. We go for a drive to the lighthouse but are too mean to pay the £2.50 toll, eliciting another ‘didn’t have to pay before Wills and Kate’ and headed back to the queues over the bridge.
My conversation with Dafydd Hardy is enlightening. I start by telling him that my family think house prices, tourism and general prices have risen since the arrival of William and Kate. He laughs. Well it is now called ‘the island of lurve’… ‘but no, if the market had been strong I think it would have outpaced the mainland but it hasn’t. Prices still around the 2008 level.
It’s a tourist island so that is still buoyant and perhaps there are younger ones now as Wills and Kate have made it cooler.
But the biggest impact they have made is on the general antipathy of the North Wales population to the Royals.. it is definitely a warmer relationship now’.
Who lives on the island? I ask.’Many old Welsh families going back generations, retirees from Manchester and Liverpool who used to holiday here, some big names from Northern businesses have large places and of course those involved in the energy industry.
Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey
All sounds rather dull really, until I say ‘so no great reason to look at it as an investment area?’.
‘Far from it’ is the response ‘but it has nothing to do with Royalty- and everything to do with energy. Apart from a huge focus on biomass, wind and hydro energy production here, the new reactor is going to bring massive opportunity and jobs’. Before Wills and Kate it was known as ‘Energy Island’
It turns out that the existing reactor Wylfa A based on the North Eastern tip is being de-commissioned and it has recently been approved to build Wylfa B. With this comes 5000 initial jobs and 1000 permanent jobs. These people need housing. Firstly serviced apartments will be the thing and later these can be long term rentals or holiday lets.
So you would invest? ‘Yes’ Dafydd says. And I am not alone, there is some interesting stuff happening. Already one large house is being turned into an up-scale cookery school and there are strong indications that a luxury hotel is about to be built. Also we are getting quite a lot of footballers representatives sniffing around- purely for investment.
Not forgetting that the entire coastline is a designated area of outstanding natural beauty so tourism will remain strong.
Back home I ask the rest of the family their thoughts on Anglesey.
‘They’re all a bit odd’ says the 22 year old bass player for a neo-punk band, described by the Sunday Times as making Llanfairfechan more ‘Transyl-fechan’.
‘Best thing about Anglesey is there are two ways off’ is another ‘insightful’ comment.
Despite the investment potential, with Anglesey some things never change, the North South divide remains alive and well and separated by the Menai Straits.
Tracy Kellett
What you can buy on Anglesey:
Dafydd Hardy Website
