Whitmore Bay

Today on Barry Island you’ll find restaurateurs, seaside shopkeepers, purveyors of fine ice cream and tens of thousands of visitors. Take a stroll along the promenade to enjoy the views across the bay. The beach is easily accessed with several ramps and steps at different points along the prom.

Vibrant beach huts and a colourful traversing wall are popular additions to the Eastern Promenade.  Gavin and Stacey fans will want to head over to the Western Shelter for fish & chips and a go on Nessa’s slots!

With accessible (and dog friendly beaches out of season), lifeguards and resort managers, the cleaned and rolled sands of Whitmore Bay are freshly available every day of the year.

Once a haven for smugglers and pirates, these days, Barry Island’s greatest treasure is the gleaming, golden sand of its fine beaches!

Family fun

As well as the climbing wall and crazy golf, there are plenty of activities to keep children busy on the beach. You can go rock-pooling at either end of the beach, or beach-combing along the shore to find shells, driftwood, sea glass and other interesting finds. For more ideas download this activity sheet – Whitmore Bay – Family Fun

Walks

Barry Island is easy to get to with a train station just behind the funfair. There are beautiful coastal walks in both directions. Join the Wales Coast Path which goes through the Island, around Nell’s Point and past the National Coastwatch Centre with views across the Bristol Channel to the Somerset Coastline. Continue to Jackson’s Bay which has a dog friendly beach all year round. There is also a guided audio walk you can follow to St Baruc’s Chapel that will take you around Nell’s Point. Or walk in the other direction around Friars Point for views across the Old Harbour and Watchtower Bay.

For an extended walk, follow Vale Trail 4 which is a 3.5 hour walk to Limpert Bay (Gileston). Also worth visiting are the RNLI Visitor Centre, and Barry War Museum (check opening times).

Read more about the history of Barry Island as a resort here.

Events

Throughout the summer there are fantastic events held on the Island such as the Barry Island 10K, and Gwyl Fach y Fro (Welsh language festival celebrating Welsh music and dance). Keep an eye on the Events page for more information.

Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)

The rocks of Barry Island are special because they tell us about the environment in the distant past. Rocks formed as lake, playa (an un-drained and flat desert basin) and beach sediments from 205 to 290 million years ago sit on top of older limestone from 350 million years ago. These rocks and structures enable geologists to work out where the coastline was during the Triassic period, between 205 and 250 million years ago.

The two photos below on the left are of the rock formation at the Nell’s Point end of the beach, and show an example of a fissure fault line.

The photo of rock strata on the right shows the Mercia mudstone group outcrop at the Friar’s Point end of the beach. The red colouration in the lower cliff section indicates deposition in a semi-arid or arid saline or ephemeral lake environment. The distinctive white gypsum nodules in the lower cliff section suggest periods of more extensive evaporation, leading to the deposition of evaporitic gypsum salts. The creamy grey to greenish grey rocks in the upper cliff indicate a change to restricted marine and open marine environments, produced in the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic rise in global sea levels, which resulted in widespread marine transgression (when sea level rises relative to the land and the shoreline moves toward higher ground, which results in flooding).