I'd call this a hidden Welsh gem. Freshly picked and local…read moregrown fruit and vegetables, traditional Welsh cheese and butter, local meat and numerous local beers, chutneys and herbs and spices. In the middle there is also a selection of chocolates to die for along with a mini bakery with freshly made Welsh cakes and bread. With all the produce being locally sourced, you know what you're getting. But bearing this in mind, the prices aren't cheap. There's also a cafe, icecream parlour, wine shop and bee centre located right outside so everyone should be able to find something to suit their taste.

Although the Bodnant Food Centre is only a few miles from home until today we'd never visited. It's…read morethe sort of place you need to go out of your way to get to and in any case we'd heard mixed reviews of the place. However one quiet Saturday afternoon we needed something to pass an hour and with nowhere else to go we turned south down the Conwy Valley and headed for Furnace Farm. The centre essentially comprises three parts for visitors the Hay Loft Restaurant, The Furnace Tea-Room and the Furnace Farm Shop. There are however other parts of the business including a cookery school and a bee keeping centre. We didn't try either the restaurant or tea-rooms on our visit but instead headed for the shop. My first impression was that it was bigger than I'd expected, it's maybe the size of an average convenience store but for some reason I'd expected a tiny little room. There's everything you'd expect from a shop like this including meat, veg, dairy produce, preserves, cakes, beer and all manner of cooking ingredients. Surprisingly for a Welsh food centre some of the produce wasn't Welsh, I spotted produce from Shropshire, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire amongst others, but most of the stock is Welsh. There's some genuinely local produce too including beer from the Great Orme Brewery which misleadingly isn't located on the Great Orme but is in fact located about a mile to the north of Furnace Farm on the outskirts of Glan Conwy. They also stock preserves from Baravelli's of Conwy and cakes from Swigr a Sbeis and Ty Hwnt I'r Bont, both of which are located just down the valley in Llanrwst. They also stock locally reared meat and game, some of which is reared on the Bodnant Estate and rest elsewhere in the Conwy Valley. What isn't surprising is that the prices are often a bit hefty, this isn't somewhere many people will go to do the weekly shop. We bought a few items (mainly Great Orme beer!) but I think for most normal families this is somewhere to purchase couple of treats rather than do any substantial shopping. In many ways it's more of a tourist attraction than a shop for the locals and I'm sure they'll be looking to attract coach parties to boost their trade. Although we will no doubt return at some point in time it's not likely to be anytime soon. However I do hope the business succeeds. It does provide much needed employment in a rural area and also provides a place for local food produces to sell their wares so it's not all bad.

This is a great greengrocer. Service with a smile, prices often rounded down when you get to the…read moretill! There is a great range of fresh fruit and veg. There is also an excellent range of gluten free goods, and some tinned products.

this is a very good small bakers shop, trading as Scillicorns, a nod apparently to a longer…read moreestablshed local name. It is always very busy, which is a good sign, and there is a trademark wonderful smell of fresh bread, for the very good reason that the bread is indeed very good indeed, as are the cakes and pastries. Try one of their lovely apple or blackcurrant tarts, you probably could not make one for the price. Call in on the way out for day, to pick up some sandwiches and fresh scones for the picnic, or a hot sausage roll to eat in the car en route. Go on, you deserve it! A real gem of a place , easy to park near, and staffed by friendly and cheery people. They start baking here at ( or well before ) the crack of dawn, and deserve to be cherished and supported .

Aldi in Llandudno is located on a corner of the Mostyn Champneys Retail Park next to Argos. It's a…read morewell known discount supermarket and once upon a time I used to do my shopping there. I don't go there too much these days as didn't think the quality was always as good as it could be, especially the fresh fruit and vegetables which always seemed to go off a bit too quickly. I'm also not convinced it's all that cheap, at least not for what I buy. It's worth the odd look now and again though as they seem to get completely random items of non-food stock so you never know what you'll find.

Did not have my "stalk" avocados in stock asked they refused to even talk to me, the manager is…read moreabusive and used the b word.

This shop made the national papers a while back when Kate Middleton was photographed pushing a…read moretrolley laden with royal groceries across the car park. It seems this is Kate and Will's supermarket of choice when they're in residence on Anglesey. You do wonder in fact if this shop was opened by royal request because I can't understand why Waitrose should open their only branch in North Wales (that I know of at least) on the outskirts of such a quiet backwater as Menai Bridge. I recently visited for the first time, I'd been working on Anglesey and was attracted by a offer I'd half heard on an advert I'd half watched. In the event I couldn't find what I was after, maybe the offer had expired or maybe I'd misheard the ad. It turns out Waitrose is a more expensive version of Sainsburys, not somewhere I'd go for the weekly shop even if I didn't live twenty miles away but possibly somewhere I'd go for the odd treat. On quibble is that the carpark is quite busy and clearly they've tried to maximise the number of cars it can accommodate by minimising the size of the parking bays. The result is very tight parking spaces which isn't convenient given the proportion of elderly drivers, who may not be agile enough to squeeze out of a half open door, and also the number of Chelsea tractors which struggle to squeeze in. Expect the odd dent in your door if you visit often.

The Tesco store involves a ten minute walk from my house, alog a path that could be deemed to be…read moreunsafe or unsavoury, which means I rarely make the trip. Despite this, the Tesco store, albeit around half the size of the store in Bangor (a Tesco Extra) stocks a good range of produce and seems to always have a lot of special offers/products that are not, to my knowledge, available in stores elsewhere. For example, last week I bought a jar of coffee on a special offer, and later called in to the Bangor store to purchase more to stock up, but it wasn't on offer in the Bangor store, some 8 miles away. Also, last year I searched the Bangor Tesco store for an item, along with several other stores in Bangor and Caernarfon, before finding it in the Tesco at Caernarfon. Unlike other Tesco stores, the Caernarfon one always has a lot of checkout staff and a couple of people serving people who're buying lottery tickets, cigarettes and newspapers and magazines.

Tesco is as cheap or expensive as you want to make it, with their £2.50 - £100+ bottles of wine…read more This standard food-only store without a petrol station was built in the late 80's/early 90s and it's size means you can get many things but you won't feel spoilt for choice or offers (eg forget about the £10 finest meal deals - more often off than on here). Beware also of the incredible amount of spilt things! it's insane, nearly every aisle has got a little yellow warning sign over some spill or other. I think they must clear them out once a week. The fridges break down regularly too as Tesco clearly try and bleed the last breaths out of this building before they get a new flashy one to rival Bangor. Go here if you have to, if you can afford the extra 50p drive to Bangor.

Visited the store this morning Saturday 3rd January at 09.30 and parked in one of the disabled…read moreparking spaces. When my wife tried to get out of the car she slipped on the ice that was untreated across the whole area. She was fortunate that she was able to stop herself from falling by holding onto the door. I drove from the parking spaces and found a lesser frozen area. We made our way across the pedestrian crossing and into front of the store. The surface of the crossing and surrounding areas was very slippery and untreated with many people nearly falling. When we were leaving at 10.15 I saw a storeman had started to throw salt on the crossing and along the pathway With the car park so frozen at that time why as a matter of duty of care hadn't it occurred to anyone to make the areas clear of ice before the store got busy with customers.

This Tesco store takes a bit of getting to as it's located on a roundabout in between Bangor and…read moreCaernarfon. What's good about this store is that it's the only 24 hour supermarket for miles, but as it's a bit too far for people from Bangor to walk to, it's very quiet of a night. The Tesco store has an excellent cafe which is located above the store floor up an escalator which means customers get to people watch others doing their shopping (and look at the dust on top of the aisles!) whilst they drink their coffee, eat their muffin and read their newspaper. The cafe is quite large and there's always an abundance of free seats and plenty of staff serving which minimises the queueing time. Prices in the cafe are reasonable, for example a cafe latte coffee is around £1.15 whilst a jacket potato with a little pot of tuna is £2.50. The store has a great entertainment section, with a wide range of dvds and cds, and all the latest mobile phones, mp3 players, kettles and other electrical goods. As well as this they have an entire row filled with the yellow deal racks, which include stationary, clothes, tools and home utensils, and some of the special offers are located immediately upon entering the store, which highlights the best offers.

Colwyn Bay's branch of the discount supermarket Lidl is located in the West End of the town, about…read morea mile or so from the town centre. It easy enough to get by car, being close to the A55 and the main road through town, and has a decent sized car park. You will find cheap and reasonable quality produce, although not necessarily well known brand names. Personally I'm not convinced that the likes of Lidl and Aldi are really cheaper than Asda or Tesco so I don't go here too often.

I don't like it when staff members here comment on my purchases and the range of branded items is…read morevery limited. Their wine is not as cheap as some that can be found in Aldi (though you get what you pay for) and one could find better in the lower rungs of mainstream supermarket shelves for the same sort of price. However, they have been improving their store over the past year including an interior renovation and an automated 'fresh' bread bakery. Nicer shopping experience overall than the nearest Aldi stores, in my opinion.