Visit Gavin and Stacey’s most memorable locations on Barry Island

“MY motto is fags and weed, glue and speed, but I draws the line at crack.”

It was Dave Coaches’ immortal line in the first episode of Gavin & Stacey that hooked me.

And if truth be told, I have been obsessed with Barry Island in the Vale of Glamorgan ever since.

It is ten years since we last saw the Shipmans, the Wests and the Sutcliffes on our screens. But on Christmas Day, Gavin, Stacey and the gang return to BBC1 for a long-awaited festive special.

As a self-confessed mega- fan, I have taken myself off to Barry Island for a pilgrimage to the best Gavin & Stacey locations.

“Oh. Tracey, what’s occurring?” hollers my tour guide, Shân, from across the car park, and for the next 24 hours she regales me with a barrage of Nessa quotes, Bryn-isms and other snippets about my favourite show.

‘PALM-LINED PROMENADE’

Arriving in Barry is like stepping into the set and I half hope to see Nessa as a human statue outside the town hall. Our first stop is 47 Trinity Street, where Gwen and Stacey lived next door to Doris and across the road from Uncle Bryn.

Even after ten years, it still draws fans who come for a selfie outside Barry’s most famous address. Next, it is over to Barry Island itself, now more a daytripper resort since Butlins Barry Island closed in the Nineties.

With its cheery palm-lined promenade, rainbow-coloured beach huts and vast stretch of blonde sand, it’s no wonder the locals call it Barrybados. We walk through Barry Island Pleasure Park, where Dave Coaches catches Nessa and Smithy riding the Dodgems in series three.

It is Barry’s biggest attraction and home to the Barry Eye, a 29-metre-high ferris wheel with cracking views over the Bristol Channel. The once-tired seaside resort has benefitted from what Uncle Bryn would call the “Gavin &  Stacey effect” over the past decade.

‘NESSA’S FAVOURITE CHIPPY’

A host of trendy cafe bars such as Whitmore & Jackson and the Seadog Tavern have popped up between the chippies and the amusement arcades. We stop for a coffee and a cream cake at Marco’s Cafe on the Western Promenade, where Stacey worked in series three.

Next door is Boofy’s Chip Shop, Nessa’s favourite chippy, where you can get a Smithy special — three battered sausages and chips — before nipping next door to the Island Leisure amusement arcade, where Nessa worked.

Just don’t let her catch you bashing the slots, all right? But, as it goes, apart from the London scenes in the first episode, the entire three series were filmed in and around Barry.

We swing by Pam and Mick’s house, filmed in a bungalow on Laburnum Way in Dinas Powys.

‘QUICK PINT’

Even Billericay’s Capriccio’s Italian restaurant has made it across the border in the guise of Villa Napoli Italian restaurant in Penarth.

I’ve decided to go with the Bryn special, the gnocchi.

After lunch, Shân and I stop by All Saints Church Hall in Penarth, where Gwen’s birthday barn dance was held, then nip in for a quick pint in The Colcot Arms Hotel in Barry, where Smithy held his pub quiz.

Finally, Shân drives us over to Llanmaes, a pretty village a few miles outside Barry, for a peek into St Cattwg’s, the 13th-Century flint church where Gavin and Stacey got married.
Barry Island, you absolute charmer. I’m smitten all over again.

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