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Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza

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Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza is an annual three-day event held in the main street of the town over the May Bank Holiday weekend. Originally conceived and organised by the town council in 1986 as a means of boosting tourism, the event was later taken over by a volunteer-run company. In its early days, this Victorian-themed carnival featured traditional entertainments with many people wearing period costume. Over the years, however, the emphasis has shifted, with much of funding for the event now coming from modern funfair attraction operators. The Extravaganza is held in conjunction with the Llandudno Transport Festival, whose venue is the nearby Bodafon Fields in Craig y Don.

Victorian Extravaganza (Official Site)

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The explosives storage facility built by the Air Ministry at Rhiwlas was a sub unit of 31 Maintenance Unit Llanberis. The site, covering an area of approximately 60 hectares, comprised 25 timber-framed Laing huts. Following the collapse of part of the underground bomb store at Llanberis, 7,000 tons of explosives were re-located to the Rhiwlas depot in 1942. The site closed in 1953.

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Fuerteventura’s first airport was the military aerodrome built near Tefía in the 1940s. This opened to commercial traffic in 1959, but was superseded in 1962 by a new airport at Los Estancos, the latter’s site having been chosen for its proximity to the island’s capital. However, increasing levels of demand coupled with local wind problems led to this site in turn giving way to the present location at El Matorral, 5km south of Puerto del Rosario. The airport at El Matorral opened in 1969 and its facilities were expanded in 1978 and again 1994. Further expansion work has recently been completed on the terminal, allowing it to double its passenger capacity. In 2012 the airport handled 38,000 flights and 4.4 million passengers.

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Las Grandes Playas is a 3.5km-long group of beaches in the Parque Natural de Corralejo. This stretch of Fuerteventuran coastline has at its centre two hotels – the Clubhotel Riu Oliva Beach and the Riu Palace Tres Islas. These are the only two buildings in the Parque Natural. The fine sandy beaches together with the near constant winds make this a very popular spot for water sports such as surfing, windsurfing and kiteboarding.

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The Parque Natural de Corralejo is a desert zone in the northeast corner of Fuerteventura. Its field of sand dunes and white sandy beaches stretches some 8km from Corralejo south to Montaña Rojo. Its fine sand, formed by erosion of sea shells, lies over extensive volcanic badlands (‘maplaís’). The area, covering over 2,600 hectares, was designated a Natural Park in 1994. This superseded the previous classification from 1982, which also included the Isla de Lobos — now a Parque Natural in its own right. The park is also part of a bird reserve (Zona de Especial Protección para las Aves).

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The production of sea salt was an industry that employed hundreds of people in the eastern Canary Islands in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, however, Salinas del Carmen is the only working salt works to survive in Fuerteventura. The works, located 3km south of Caleta de Fuste, was originally known as Salinas de Hondurilla and dates back to the 19th century. It was rebuilt around 1910 and was acquired in the late 1970s by the island authorities, who restored the site and built El Museo de la Sal (The Salt Museum) there. The sea-spray salt produced at the works using traditional methods is now marketed internationally as a gourmet product. It is lower in sodium than conventional salt and higher in minerals such as magnesium, potassium and sulphates.

The production process starts with waves driven by the trade winds battering against rocks on the shore. The resulting sea spray, with increased concentrations of minerals, overspills into a receiving area, from where it is channelled into a series of tanks (‘cocederos’) to be warmed by the heat of the sun. From there, the heated brine is then allowed to run down into the evaporation tanks (‘tajos’), where the salt gradually crystallises in a thin layer on the surface of the water. The tanks are stirred twice a day and once almost all the water has evaporated the salt is raked up into mounds to drain at the side of the tanks before being taken to the salt store.

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The Molino de Antigua is a visitor centre on the outskirts of Antigua in central Fuerteventura. In addition to its fully restored windmill, the centre also features a cactus garden, exhibition rooms and a craft shop. The windmill used to grind gofio, a traditional Canarian flour made from toasted maize. The Molino de Antigua has been selected as the location for a new cheese museum, El Museo de Queso de Fuerteventura.

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Created 185,000 years ago, Montaña de Arena (422m) was declared a Natural Monument in 1994. The mountain is located 2.5km north of La Oliva in northern Fuerteventura, and its volcanic ‘bad lands’ plain, the Malpaís de la Arena, stretches some 6km from La Oliva northwards to Lajares. There are two conjoined craters at the top of the volcano’s pyroclastic cone, which stands 120m above the base of the mountain.