Bangor

Bangor Pier stretches most of the way across the Menai Strait.

Bangor is a town on the southern shore of the Menai Straits, famous for being the seat of a bishop. Today it is, perhaps, better known for being the location of the northern campus of the University of Wales, but it also has one of the few surviving Victorian piers in Britain.

At Bangor the straits between the island of Anglesey and the mainland begin to narrow after the wide expanse of the Lavan Sands. Just at this point there is a Victorian pier, stretching out across the last of the sands almost to the other side of the Menai Straits. One of the few piers to survive the vicissitudes of time in good order, it is well worth a visit - and certainly worth watching the film.

Only a mile outside the town is the first of the bridges across the Menai Straits, the cast-iron suspension bridge built by Thomas Telford; less than a mile further is the remains of the tubular railway bridge of Robert Stephenson. These two pioneering bridges are remarkable monuments of the Age of Iron, when anything seemed possible with this new, wonder material.