Miss Mostyn walks the Great Orme, where Llandudno’s manners give way to cliffs, goats and useful exertion.

A Great Orme walk is the most satisfying way to understand Llandudno. The town below may flatter itself with hotels and bunting, but the Orme is the older authority in the room.

The headland rises to 207 metres and offers routes of varying length and difficulty, from the gentle lower slopes accessible from Happy Valley to the full summit ascent and the complete circuit of Marine Drive and the clifftop paths. A walker of moderate fitness can reach the summit in under an hour; a thorough day on the headland can extend to five or six hours.

From the pier or town centre, one can climb through Happy Valley, follow paths towards the summit or take a longer route around Marine Drive. Each route reveals a different Llandudno, some of them less supervised than others.

The climb is not heroic, but it is still a hill. Anyone who describes it as nothing in unsuitable shoes should be viewed with suspicion, particularly if they are trying to impress someone.

The reward is a changing set of views: the bay, the pier, the Little Orme, Conwy estuary, Anglesey and, on a clear day, the mountains inland, Yr Wyddfa and the Carneddau filling the southern horizon with the kind of scale that puts seaside commerce in perspective.

The summit can be busy and practical, which is fine. The quieter pleasure lies in the paths away from it, where goats appear, the wind has opinions and one may briefly forget the existence of car parks.

The limestone grassland of the SSSI supports species including wild cotoneaster, which is found naturally in Britain only on the Great Orme, along with spring squill, bloody cranesbill and various orchid species. One notes this because it changes the walk from exercise to examination.

The Kashmiri goats (descendants of a herd with Windsor Castle origins) graze freely across the headland and may appear on paths, roads or at viewpoints with the air of residents who find the visitor traffic tiresome but tolerable.

Allow more time than you think. The best Great Orme walk is not a march. It is a slow negotiation with limestone, weather and whatever thoughts have followed you uphill.

Return by a different route from the one you ascended and the headland becomes a larger and more complex landscape. The Great Orme is not a peak to be bagged. It is a place to be read.