When temperatures rise in South Wales there is one beach people in the capital tend to flock to.
Located a mere 30 minutes from the capital of Cardiff, the golden sands of Barry are quickly filled with daytrippers looking to make the most of the sun.
The trouble, according to locals, is that, aside from the unpredictability of the British weather, the visitors didn’t necessarily stick about.
“Barry used to be an area that not a lot of people would move into,” said Helen Molitika, who grew up in the town and lived in the area for many years. “If you were born in Barry, you stayed in Barry. You didn’t really have outside people buying houses.
“It was a very small, but good town. The centre had everything you needed and you had the beach, which was a destination. Other than that you didn’t really have any other reason for visiting. Barry.”
However, this has all changed.
The Vale of Glamorgan, the county where Barry is the central hub has been labelled one most desirable to live in by The Times, while house prices in the area have nearly quadrupled since the turn of the century.
Neither shift is surprising for Molitika who has witnessed the transformation of the quiet Welsh town first hand.
She continued: “I bought my [last] house in 2010 and it was a big four bedroom Edwardian property with all the proper period features and that was £140,000.
“But now houses on that street go for £240,000. So within 14 years they’ve gone up £100,000.”
Like many pretty seaside towns within a reasonable distance of a major employment centre, post-pandemic Barry has generated huge amounts of interest from residents of thriving capital Cardiff.
“Barry is only four stops on the train to Cardiff, so it’s a 21 minute journey,” Molitika added.
“I think a lot of people are working from home as well. So it doesn’t really matter where your job is because you’re spending more time in the house on Zoom. So I think people during the lockdown kind of spread a bit further from where they worked.”
Molitika owns the clothing shop Box Edit Boutique in the Goodsheds development in Barry and has encountered many of those customers who’ve made the switch to living in the seaside town.
“We’re on a development which is like [repurposed] shipping containers and train carriages,” she said. “We get a lot of people from affluent areas in Cardiff come in, but we also get a lot of youngsters from Cardiff that have just put an offer on a house or are looking around the area to buy, which you never would have had years ago.”
The business owner is convinced that part of the reason for this interest in the town are initiatives like Goodsheds, which breathed new life into a long-abandoned strip of industrial port land by installing street food, bars, independent shops and local businesses.
But there is another slightly more unusual reason Barry has ended up on the map: the hit BBC TV series Gavin and Stacey.
First broadcast in 2007, the show told the unlikely love story of Essex boy Gavin, played by Matthew Horne, and Barry native Stacey, portrayed by Joanna Page.
A massive hit with viewers, it ran for three series and made stars of writers James Corden and Ruth Jones.
With large parts of the TV show filmed in South Wales it also gave Barry some prime time mainstream airtime.
“I do think that’s a lot to do with [putting Barry town on the map],” Molitika said.
“It brought a lot of attention to the area. My shop looks down the road to the beach, you see all the traffic queuing and every weekend you see ‘Dave coaches’ Gavin and Stacey tour buses they are always full.”