Every year, around the last weekend of March, one man with possibly the best job in Wales revs up his tractor and drives on to the most iconic beach in all the land.
The man is 49-year-old Russell Morgan and the beach is Barry Island's Whitmore Bay. It's Russell's job to carefully rakes the sand into neat lines, filling in the holes and clearing up the rubbish from the antics on the beach the day before. It gives him an enormous sense of satisfaction to look back at the meticulously straight lines on Whitmore beach and it's an art he's perfected over the 20-odd years he's done the job, he said.
"People like to see the beach when it's raked," he said. He often posts pictures of his handiwork on Facebook, especially the first rake of the season and the last, he added.
His 2022 season kicked off on March 26. He'll be on the beach every single day until the end of October, just after 6am, and just in time to watch the sun rise on yet another day in Wales. Some of those sunsets can be pretty epic, Russell said, made even more special by having the beach virtually to himself apart from some early morning dog walkers and the keen open water swimmers.
"I'm lucky to be down there at that time watching the sunrise," he admitted. "That's why I do a decent job - I enjoy it and that makes a difference."
Russell has worked for the Vale of Glamorgan's cleansing team for two decades and after making the beach look good, he washes the salt off the tractor and heads to his road sweeper which he drives for the rest of the day.
He doesn't have to be such a perfectionist but it's thanks to Russell we've come to expect that iconic newly-raked look without fail. He added: "It looks nice and I try to get the lines as straight as I can. I make sure I turn around at the same point to keep it uniform so it looks nice."
Russell is Barry "born and bred", having been born in the same house in Queens Street as his father was before him. Over the years the dad-of-two who turns 50 next January has watched the fortunes of Barry change drastically.
In his teens, he used to work at the Butlins holiday park and can remember walking across the old Ash Path when it was busy with trains. He said: "Barry has changed massively, especially around the dock. You do forget what it used to be like.
"Gavin and Stacey put it back on the map and that generated a bit more publicity."
Like any job, it has it's dull moments, Russell said, but the sunrises more than make up for that. He added: "When you get down there on a calm day and see the sun reflecting off the dock, it's beautiful. Sometimes when you get the red background and the dark clouds.
"To live and work on the coast we are really lucky."
