Miss Mostyn rides the Great Orme Tramway, with affection, judgement and no patience for rushing uphill.
The Great Orme Tramway opened in 1902, when people still understood that climbing a hill should involve engineering, brass fittings and a faint sense of public occasion.
It is the only cable-hauled street tramway still operating in Britain, which makes it considerably rarer than it first appears while one is queueing behind a family eating biscuits. The tramway runs from Victoria Station near the old town centre in two stages, changing at Halfway Station before continuing to the summit.
The lower section is the most delicious part, moving through the street before escaping onto the open slopes. It feels as if the tram has slipped out of town without a chaperone, which I have always considered a sound start to any outing.
The technology is genuinely Victorian in spirit. A continuous cable, powered from the winding house at Halfway, pulls the cars up to the summit at 207 metres. The journey takes roughly half an hour in total, which is about right for something that should not be hurried.
On busy days, it can be slow, crowded and full of people holding ice creams at angles that trouble the upholstery. Still, patience is rewarded. This is not transport in a hurry. It is a little piece of civic theatre pulled uphill by cable.
The tramway has operated for well over a century with the kind of stubborn continuity one hopes for in public institutions and certain marriages. It survived the motor car, budget cuts and the general twentieth-century impatience with anything that cannot be franchised.
The ride is short, but it gives the Orme ceremony. Take it up, walk down, combine it with the mines or Happy Valley, and do not spend the entire journey looking at your phone like a person raised in a cupboard.
The tramway is old-fashioned in the useful sense. It reminds one that Llandudno once knew how to make even a hill climb feel socially significant.
It also serves a practical purpose: it makes the summit accessible for visitors who cannot or should not walk the full gradient. Usefulness and charm rarely inhabit the same vehicle, but on the Great Orme Tramway they have managed it for a hundred and twenty years.