Friends Of Bangor Garth Pier

20/10/2026

From Monday Oct 26th pier closing 5pm
O dydd Llun Hydref 26ain bydd y pier yn cau 5pm

20/10/2026

Cheese day at Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales 🧀🩵🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Every Tuesday in the run-up to Christmas, we are celebrating one of the cheeses from our fantastic cheese fridge, so that you can pick the very best for your Christmas Cheeseboard.

This week it is the turn of the first of our cheese bakes: Rockstar Cheese and W**e Bake, a vintage cave-aged cheddar and Sauvignon Blanc cheese bake, crafted by Snowdonia Cheese Company using a unique family recipe and the finest natural ingredients.

Simply pop it in the oven for 20 minutes until it's bubbling away nicely and just going golden around the edges. Apparently, you can also microwave it, which I didn’t know. Maybe next time I'm in a hurry, I'll try microwaving it, but I can't see me changing from baking it in the oven any time soon - I like the crispy bits you get around the edge of the dish too much!

Dan and I love this with crusty part-baked rolls and some nice Dragon Welsh Salted Butter, but you could pair it with many different things - breadsticks, crackers, celery or carrot sticks, the possibilities are endless and it makes a really excellent starter course too.

**e

19/10/2026

Book of the week at Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales 📚📘🩵

Our book of the week this week comes from Y Lolfa: Teach Your Cat Welsh by Anne Cakebread. It's part of the Teach Your Dog series, which we stock in numerous different languages.

Anne's journey to writing the Teach Your Dog series all started when she adopted a dog after she moved to West Wales. Frieda was a rescue whippet who would only obey Welsh commands, and it gave Anne someone to speak and practice Welsh aloud to. From this she started writing Teach Your Dog Welsh, which was such a success that she has gone on to write a whole series of books introducing the basics of different languages.

If you've ever wanted to learn Welsh and don't have anyone to practise with, why not learn with your best friend and Teach Your Cat Welsh? This step-by-step guide gives you words and phrases for you to learn, and your cat to ignore. A perfect gift for any cat lover with an interest in the Welsh language, with delightful illustrations throughout.

18/10/2026

Great new stock for gift ideas at Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales 🦉🎁🩵

Our resident Gonks, from Môn Clay, have secretly been off galavanting in the woodland recently and have been very excited to introduce their new friends. Imagine my delight when the Owls came to visit. Welcome to the kiosk!

Limited stock available, grab one whilst you can! We've had a full restock of Gonks as well, with some festive additions too. Come and see what we've got.

17/10/2026

Pick up something for National Baking Week at Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales 📚🍰🩵

This week is National Baking Week and what better way to celebrate it than with some really tasty Welsh recipies.

Flavours of Wales: Baking Cookbook by Gilli Davies and Huw Jones is filled with some fantastic Welsh recipes, including of course Bara Brith. There's a lovely mix of both sweet and savoury here, with recipes for tarts, biscuits and cakes as well as pasties, cheesy scones and pikelets - a comprehensive collection of tasty Welsh recipes from all across Wales.

I'd love to hear if you're baking anything special this week!

15/10/2026

14/10/2026

It’s always cheese day at Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales 🧀🩵🩵

This Tuesday Cheeseday, we are celebrating Snowdonia Cheese Company's Red Devil, a Red Leicester with Habanero Chillies.

This one is a firm favourite with Dan and our best friend - affectionately known as “the boys”! Every Christmas, without doubt, this is their No 1.

I’m not going to lie, it's not one of mine. It's got quite a chilli kick to it. It really packs a punch (and that's not my thing), but the boys go wild for it. They love it. This will be Christmas presents, and it will be on the cheeseboard. That is how much this is enjoyed.

I'll be enjoying my Cheddar with Leeks from last week, but if you like your cheese with a kick of chilli, this could be the perfect one for you!

12/10/2026

Book of the week at Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales 📚📘🩵

Today, our book of the week is The Welsh Almanac by Bettrys Jones - a Seasonal Guide to 2027.

This book is a treasure trove of traditions and customs, journeying through the year month by month, with tide times, sunrise/sunset times, what to sow and what to harvest, activities to do, recipies to enjoy, folk songs to learn, and much more!

As Hanan Issa puts it: "A comprehensive yet magical love letter to Wales; a great gift to anyone who has fallen under Cymru's spell."

This year I came across the Almanac by Lia Leendertz, for the first time, which she publishes annually, and I've been really enjoying it, so I am hoping Santa brings me a copy of The Welsh Almanac for Christmas (hint hint Dan!) as, having breezed through it to write this post, it's definitely the kind of thing I love. If you’re an almanac lover too, we also have a first-of-it’s-kind Welsh-language Almanac, written by the Morgan family.

And finally, just to bring it full circle back to the pier, the cover design and illustration for The Welsh Almanac is by local artist & illustrator, Callie Jones, who has prints and cards of the pier available to buy from the Friends of Bangor Garth Pier kiosk opposite ours!

#2027

11/10/2026

Wonderful image Lisa Mayes Photography 🌌💚💜

Today I was going to post about the less exciting aspects of my "Little Mornings" project - the grey & wet days, and the days that the bin lorry has hampered my efforts! But instead, Mother Nature had other ideas and last night I managed to capture my first Aurora of the season!

As I was getting ready for work last night, I saw that there was an Aurora alert. I have an app on my phone that said there was a red alert, which means is that the Northern Lights could potentially be visible by eye and camera from anywhere in the UK.

I ran out onto our decking, and this is the photo I got. I was incredibly lucky really as by the time I got to work, the other end of town, 10 minutes later, it was drizzling!

The colours are a lot less vibrant to the naked eye than in the photograph here, but it was still visible. It almost looked like just the last remnants of daylight on the horizon, but this was 9:40pm in October, so it was definitely dark. It's a pity there was so much cloud, and that I was heading to work, as I didn't have time to stay and take some more photos, But I'm hopeful we'll get more opportunities to see it again this winter.

Now that the Aurora season is just starting, I wanted to let you know: chances are, you can take photos like this using your phone - any semi-modern phone should have the capability. My very first Aurora photo was taken on an iPhone 13! You just need a long exposure (10 seconds is what I used here). I highly recommend getting an Aurora app to give you an alert when it might be visible - AuroraWatch is one that I started out with, although there are other more detailed ones available, should you catch the Aurora bug like me!

If you are local to Bangor, I am able to show you how to do it on an iPhone - just pop into our kiosk on the pier (the green one Strait o Gymru - Strait from Wales). Unfortunately I have no clue when it comes to Android, but I do know it's possible - Google may be your best option here!

I'd love to see your Aurora photos throughout this coming winter. It's such a magical thing to capture. I've got my fingers crossed for a display this season as epic as May 2024, which was absolutely stunning, even with the naked eye - a truly unforgetable experience!

11/10/2026