Abersoch (Abersoch in general)

Member Name: Whizz11

Product:	Abersoch in general
Date:	10/11/09 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful seaside location, watersports, golf, bars, restaurants

Disadvantages: The locals/non locals

Every year my old university friends and I go to Abersoch for the weekend to stay in a cottage that one of my friends parents own as a holiday home.

Abersoch is a beautiful coastal seaside village in Wales. It is located in the community of Llanengan, Gwynedd. It is fairly near Snowdonia National Park and it's quite pretty driving through here to get to Abersoch. It's fairly small, it only has about 1,000 inhabitants.

Abersoch has a really nice vibe about it which is why I like spending the weekend here so much. It has become a very well established watersports village with windsurfing, jet-skiing and surfing popular pastimes of people who visit here. I think this is because the beach is very accessible and also a sandy beach which I much prefer than pebble beaches. The tide goes out quite a long way so you do get a nice long sandy beach which makes it a perfect tourist spot.

With this being the vibe there are a lot of young people in town, surfer dudes as I like to call them and lots of little surf shops to accommodate these sports. Lots of the shops sell the actual equipment you will need to participate as well as all the cool clothing such as Quicksilver, Roxy etc. Some of the little shops in town include, Fat Face, The White Stuff, Rip Girl and West Coast Surf Shop.

The centre of town is not very big but there are quite a few nice places to eat and drink and whenever I have been there the town is always fairly busy although in summer it is absolutely packed. A favourite of ours is the Abersoch café where you can get lovely scones with clotted cream and nice drinks. In the evening we tend to head to a restaurant called Fresh which is quite modern inside and does some lovely meals which are quite cheap. There are also quite a lot of nice pubs that you can spend the afternoon in, all with outside seating so you can enjoy the sea air.

Abersoch also has an 18 hole golf course which I'm told is quite a good one. The greens definitely look very green to me and are very wide and open as there are not too many trees on the course. I believe it is a private course but I think you can make reservations to come and play here too.

One thing that I knew about Abersoch but did some additional reading on was the struggle between the Welsh inhabitants and the non-Welsh visitors to this village. Virtually all the indigenous residents of Abersoch are Welsh language speakers and I'm sure a lot of them do not appreciate all the intrusion from non-Welsh speakers. According to an article I read, "Over the last 60 years it has become one of Britain's most important sailing centres, leading to significant immigration, mainly from England. This has jeopardised the Welsh character of the village and its use of the Welsh language."

Also, because the area has become so popular it has driven up the housing prices, much like what has happened in Cornwall and Devon as well. This was highlighted by an example which hit the headlines in February 2008 of that of a dilapidated wooden shed, 5.5 metres by 4.5 metres, for sale for £150,000. It was 10 minutes from the beach, with absolutely no view, and needed a good deal of work on it.
I think the locals are quite upset that they cannot always buy property in the place where they are from but that is always the problem you find when you live in such beautiful surroundings with a beach nearby and lots of great attractions to choose from.

In my opinion, Abersoch is a great weekend location, a bit far out in terms of actually wanting to live here but a truly stunning place with lots of fun things to do.

Summary: Abersoch