Barry Accommodation

More About Barry

There is a quieter side, too. The pebble beach and ornamental gardens at Cold Knap sit beside a boating lake, and a short walk or drive away Porthkerry Country Park spreads out beneath a towering Victorian railway viaduct, with shady woodland trails leading down to its own pebbly shore. From here the Wales Coast Path traces the cliffs of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast in both directions.

Barry is well placed for a base. Cardiff is ten miles away with a direct train, Cardiff Airport is up the road at Rhoose, and the Wales Coast Path runs the cliffs of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast in both directions from the town.

Barry was a village of about a hundred people until two men decided Cardiff was charging too much. David Davies and John Cory built their own docks and their own railway down from the valleys, and the first dock opened in 1889.

It worked faster than anyone expected. A million tons of coal went out in the first year and nine million by 1903. In 1913 Barry shipped 11.09 million tons, which made it the largest coal port in the world that year, ahead of Cardiff itself.

That money built the solid Edwardian streets on the hill and the resort down at Barry Island. It had been a real island until the dock works joined it to the shore. The trains that brought the coal down brought the day-trippers back, and the valleys came in their thousands.

The coal has gone and the waterfront is bars and flats now, but Whitmore Bay has not changed much at all. It is a wide curve of sand with the funfair behind it and the arcades along the front, and it still fills on a hot Saturday.

The other Barry is quieter. Cold Knap is a pebble beach with a boating lake and gardens behind it. Porthkerry Country Park sits under a Victorian railway viaduct, with woodland paths down to its own shore.

Then there is Gavin & Stacey, which put the town on television from 2007 and finished on Christmas Day 2024 with about twelve million people watching. Trinity Street and the arcade on the front get a steady stream of visitors taking photographs of doorways.