Llandudno is not a dedicated spa resort, and we should not pretend otherwise. It can, however, work well for a spa-style break if one chooses the right hotel or nearby country-house setting.

The appeal is the combination of treatments, sea air, walking and slower time. This is more persuasive than simply being wrapped in a towel and told one is being renewed: a phrase that is either poetry or commerce depending on what you were charged.

Bodysgallen Hall is the most substantial option. The Grade I country house, approximately one mile from the town centre, offers spa and leisure facilities alongside the formal gardens, historic architecture and fine dining that make it one of the better hotel properties in North Wales. The setting (elevated above the resort with views of Snowdonia) provides exactly the calm detachment that spa breaks require.

The combination of Bodysgallen’s spa treatments with a walk in its thirty-acre grounds, a meal in the dining room and a return to the resort for an evening at Venue Cymru makes for a complete day that requires no car and very little planning.

Some seafront and local hotels may offer leisure or treatment facilities, but standards vary. Check before booking. The word spa has been used generously in this world, sometimes by people with little more than a warm room and ambition.

The Victorian spa tradition is worth noting: Llandudno developed partly as a health resort where sea air, bathing and regulated exercise were prescribed for various complaints. The hydropathic hotels of the nineteenth century offered treatments of variable scientific validity but genuine popular appeal. The modern spa break is a direct descendant, and some of the original seafront hotels still occupy buildings that were originally designed with this tradition in mind.

The best spa break here should not be entirely indoors. Use the promenade, West Shore, the Great Orme and the coastal air as part of the reset.

The promenade walk (a mile and a half of level sea air) is better for the circulation than most treatments and costs nothing. The Great Orme walk is better still. The view from the headland improves most conditions, including several that no clinic has yet offered to treat.

Llandudno’s natural wellness asset is still the landscape. A treatment may help. A proper walk, a good view and a night away from one’s usual obligations may do rather more.

For a dedicated spa destination with more comprehensive facilities, other Welsh options exist. For a spa element within a more varied break that also includes walking, theatre, history and a genuinely interesting coastal town, Llandudno offers a combination that a purpose-built wellness resort cannot match.