Miss Mostyn guides you through Happy Valley, the green hinge between pier, gardens and private uphill intentions.

Happy Valley sits above the pier at the foot of the Great Orme, which means many people pass near it without entering properly. This is typical visitor conduct: ignore the useful thing while marching towards the obvious one.

The gardens were laid out in the 1880s as public pleasure grounds, with terraced paths, flowerbeds and the kind of Italian-influenced design that was fashionable in Victorian resort development. They opened as public gardens in 1887, making them part of the same civic confidence that built the pier and planned the promenade.

It is a sheltered pocket of gardens, paths and viewpoints, with a municipal charm that has weathered salt air, changing fashions and whatever committees have done to it since. The lower areas are accessible enough for families; the upper paths give views that reward the slightly more determined.

Not every corner is manicured. Good. A town that trims every rough edge becomes unbearable, like a man who has read one business book and now uses the word strategy at breakfast.

The place works because of its position. From here one can look across the bay, reach the cable car area, pick up walking routes onto the Great Orme or simply remove oneself from the crowds before saying something unforgivable.

The cable car station sits at the upper end of Happy Valley, giving families with smaller children the option to reach the Orme without committing to the full walk. This practical arrangement has been in place since the cable car opened in 1969.

In season, the gardens offer colour and the open-air theatre or events area adds a further reason to linger. Outside season, the space becomes quieter and more honest: a good elevated garden that happens to overlook a bay.

Families may wander. Walkers may begin the climb. Couples may discover that a bench, a view and a little discretion have served civilisation for centuries.

The rock garden and cascade are among the surviving Victorian features, though the gardens have been altered over the decades. One accepts the mixture of original intent and later maintenance decisions, as one must with most inherited things.

Happy Valley is the hinge between promenade and headland, between public display and the quieter business of slipping uphill. Llandudno has always understood the usefulness of a respectable route to somewhere less supervised.