By: David M Phillips
Very soon Anglesey Airport will open up a new travel opportunity for the eager international traveller. With Scottish company Highland Airways about to start flights from Anglesey Airport to Cardiff, this beautiful island off North West Wales will join the super league of international flyers.
For years a traveller wanting to reach Anglesey from Cardiff in South Wales has had to negotiate the tricky 5 hour car journey along the winding A470 road through the middle of Wales. Leaving the South Wales Valleys near Merthyr Tydfil, you would head out for the Brecon Beacons and plunge into the heart of Wales.
Alternatively, a train journey from Cardiff to Holyhead on Anglesey still takes over five hours as your train hopes back and forth over the Wales-England border. Given the huge stretches of mountains running through central Wales, the railway has to take the Eastern border route via Hereford and Ludlow.
So, if you keen travellers out there are up to a flight across the pleasant green landscape that is Wales, then take-off from Cardiff International and forty minutes or so later you will touch down at Anglesey Airport. This is the island which boasts the longest place name in the UK and is within a ninety nine minutes boat ride from Dublin, the Irish capital.
As a resident of this island off the North Wales coast and less than sixty miles East of Dublin, it is hard to convey fully to a regular international business traveller how much this new airport at RAF Valley brings the world to Anglesey. For many years our island has been seen as a quiet backwater where people would come in the summer to enjoy our excellent sandy beaches and magnificent sea views.
Economic activity has been confined mainly to tourism, farming and a few large companies, namely Wylfa nuclear power station and the Anglesey Aluminium smelter and RAF training facility.
With the advent of the new North-South air link a number of exciting possibilities will now present themselves. Business people from overseas will eye this area for potential investment.
There is ample coastline for developing marinas and yachting is a big draw over here. Our coast is great for cruising and anyone who has sailed these waters just comes back time and again.
So as one person said the other day, Anglesey Airport means our island is well and truly open for business.
