Barry, Wales: Little-known American camp in World War II now a lovely day trip to the beach from Cardiff

BARRY, Wales – I’m sitting at a corner table looking out over the most vast, sandy beach I’ve seen since I left my native Oregon. The sun in a cloudless sky feels like a warm hand caressing my face against the 50-degree chill. I’m eating a piping hot Cornish pasty with an ice vanilla latte on the Bristol Channel and wondering if you could have a better afternoon in the British Isles.

Then I remember 80 years ago when just behind me were 5,000 American troops trying to put an end to World War II. They were brave men who turned this most southern point of Wales into a camp fighting the evil Nazis.

Now, as I turn around, I see a roller coaster.

Dear reader, if you also read my other travel blog, the twice-monthly TraveLazio, dedicated to day trips from Rome, you know I adore day trips. I get out of a city and find some little-known hamlet where I can spend a day learning about a place I never knew existed the day before. 

I prefer spending the night and meeting locals in bars but when pressed for time, nothing beats public transportation and a time schedule.

My hotel clerk in Cardiff lives in Barry and recommended it. He says the town isn’t much but the beach is nice – as long as it isn’t raining. In other words, you go on July 15. 

Getting there

But I catch a break. In four days in Wales three weeks ago, the sun shines every day and I feel nary a raindrop. Barry is only nine miles (14 kilometers) southwest of Cardiff and to reach it, I take a slow-moving chug-a-lug train from Cardiff’s Queen Street Station.

As I enter the outskirts of Cardiff, I see beautiful mansions on hills barely hidden by barren trees. During World War II, Wales was the world’s leading exporter of coal and it’s obvious some money is still around.

I get off at the bump-in-the-tracks station at Barry Docks, on the outskirts of Barry, where I wait 20 minutes for another train to take me to Barry Island. Pronounced BAR-ee, the city of 56,000 people greets you with this tiny, historical train station, a small, brick A-frame built in 1896.

Walking out, I’m dismayed to see my view of the beach blocked by this monstrosity of a roller coaster. It’s part of the Barry Island Pleasure Park, built a year later in 1897 but its historical significance is lost on me. As I walk past the roller coaster in search of sea and sand, an elderly man stands outside the station and says, “Can I help you?”

Barry War Museum

He’s standing in front of big picture windows adjacent to the train station. He confirms that this, indeed, is the Barry War Museum I read about. I’m lucky. It’s open only on Wednesdays. It’s Wednesday and closes in an hour. Only 13 years old, it graphically documents the two World Wars from a corner of the European theater few in Britain know about, let alone Americans.

Funny, I learned American soldiers weren’t always welcome here. The famous phrase about Yanks in Wales was “Over paid, over sexed and over here.” During World War I, as many as 1,000 Americans came to Barry for a little R&R before heading to the Western Front.

In 1942, more American soldiers began arriving and over the next two years they turned Barry into an important supply base. In 1903, Barry’s docks were used to transport 9 million tons of coal. Four decades later, they were used to ship arms and men to all corners of the war. In 1944, 40 supply ships made the trip to Normandy for D-Day.

In fact, they got along so well with the locals, 60 locals returned to the States as GI brides. 

Volunteers from the Barry at War Group man the museum and one elderly guide named Glenn Booker shows me some crude maps of campsites. He said the American contingency was separated into Black and White camps. The Blacks were on one side of the road in tents; the Whites were on the other side in huts.

The Blacks were transient workers and no, they didn’t always get along with the Whites, Booker says. But the British, despite their hostile colonial past, sided with the underdogs and took up for the Black troops who were called into action when the U.S. started taking casualties.

The museum is small but packed with fascinating memorabilia from the two World Wars. There’s a trench from World War I: a cramped captain’s quarters with a mannequin sitting at a tiny table with a rifle looped over his shoulder.

There’s a periscope sticking up from a makeshift sandbag and a World War I shell with a timed fuse. Booker hands me a heavy piece of metal with sharp edges the size of a dinner plate.

“This was a piece of shrapnel they found here,” he said. “More soldiers were killed by shrapnel than bullets.”

I see a collection of U.S., British and German helmets and hand grenades of various shapes and power. A dummy with a gasmask stands outside a hut of corrugated metal weighed down by sandbags.

A young volunteer, looking even younger in his round, wire-framed glasses, wears a British World War I army uniform and holds a P17 rifle that’s as tall as he is.

The last Americans didn’t leave until after World War II ended but, as the plaque reads, “Their impact on Barry has never been forgotten.”

The beach

I wave goodbye to Booker and the wars’ bloody pasts and step into powerful sunshine. I skirt around the giant roller coaster and see a massive swath of sand, nary a pebble in sight. It’s low tide and the beach is even wider.

Some young boys play cricket on the sand. I see a few joggers braving the cold wind off the channel, some of only about 30 people on the entire beach. I walk along the sand and the seagulls’ squawks fight the wind for airtime. 

I don’t feel cold. Raw beauty, sun and tranquility are a very warm combination.

At the back of the beach is a long string of food shops specializing in … guess what? There is Boofy’s World Famous Fish & Chips, Chippy on the Beach, O’Shea’s: The Finest Fish & Chips.

Many shops are closed for winter but I get in line at Marco’s Cafe where I order a fresh Cornish pasty, a meat pie stuffed with beef and potato, highly peppered, and enclosed in a paste wrapper. It’s delicious, lean and hot.

I’m surrounded by couples having lunch, elderly ladies drinking tea, young women gossipping with their ice cream.

Yes, our fellow Allies, some parts of this world were worth saving.

If you’re thinking of going …

How to get there: Take a train from Cardiff Central Station or Queen’s Street Station near the center of Cardiff to Barry Docks Station. They leave about every half hour. I paid €7.90 round trip from Queen’s Street. Change at Barry Docks for Barry Island.

Where to stay: Leonardo Hotel, 1 Park Pl., Cardiff, 44-161-774-2983, https://www.leonardo-hotels.com/cardiff/leonardo-hotel-cardiff, cardiff@leonardohotels.com. Four-star hotel in the middle of central Cardiff five minutes walk from Cardiff Castle. Has big rooms and very helpful staff. I paid €271 for three nights, not including breakfast.

Where to go: Barry War Museum, Barry Tourist Railway Station, 44-01-446-748-816, www.barrywarmuseum.co.uk, info@barrywarmuseum.co.uk, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. second Sunday of every month, free.

When to go: It rains all year round in Cardiff but it’s particularly harsh in January when it averages 20 days. The summer’s average high is 71 but can reach 80. My four days in March were in the 40s and 50s and, luckily, stone dry.

For more information: Barry Cymru, https://www.barry.cymru.