The essential things to do in Llandudno are simple, which is not the same as shallow. Walk the promenade, visit the pier, go up the Great Orme, see both North Shore and West Shore, and leave time for Conwy if you have not yet had your castle requirements satisfied.

The Great Orme is the main act. One may take the tramway (opened 1902, the only cable-hauled street tramway in Britain), the cable car (opened 1969), Marine Drive (completed 1878, toll road) or a walking route, depending on fitness, weather and whether one’s companions have begun bargaining with gravity.

Add the Bronze Age copper mines if you want depth (the largest known prehistoric copper mines in the world, worked from 1700 BC), the summit if you want scale, and the quieter paths if you wish to escape the people who think a viewpoint is complete once photographed.

The pier should be walked to the end. It is 700 metres long, opened in 1877 and Grade II* listed. Do not linger too long among the kiosks unless you enjoy commerce shouting in bunting. The reward is the view back to town, where Llandudno makes its strongest case.

The Great Orme goat herd (approximately two hundred Kashmiri goats descended from Windsor Castle animals gifted by the Shah of Persia in 1837) roam freely across the headland. Finding them is not difficult. Approaching them is inadvisable.

For a fuller visit, mix the obvious with the local: coffee off Mostyn Street, evening light at West Shore, a show at Venue Cymru and a walk that makes the town feel connected to the wider North Wales landscape.

The Alice in Wonderland trail connects the town’s links with Alice Liddell, who holidayed here at Pen Morfa on West Shore with her family in the 1860s. It gives families a structured wander through the town.

Mostyn Gallery on Vaughan Street, founded 1901 and substantially refurbished in 2010, gives Llandudno a contemporary art programme worth checking before dismissing the town as solely Victorian in its cultural horizons.

Do not try to consume Llandudno like a tray of samples. Let it unfold. Good towns, like good scandals, reveal themselves in stages.

Two or three days is the right length for a first visit: enough to cover the main ground, enough to have an accidental experience or two, and enough to leave something worth returning for.