Car owners in trouble at notorious beach can rely on one-eyed sheep farmer

Dafydd Davies says the number of drowned and stranded vehicles is off the scale this year

- By ANDREW FORGRAVE Countryside and Tourism Editor

ON COUNTLESS occasions Gwynedd farmer Dafydd Davies has climbed into his John Deere tractor and hurried to a beach notorious for catching out the unwary.

His dedication to retrieving vehicles from the clutches of Traeth y Graig Ddu (Black Rock Sands) can be traced to a horrific incident more than 40 years ago.

While installing a new silage pit on his Tremadog farm, in 1980, an accident involving a JCB bucket loader saw him pinned against a concrete septic tank. “I lost my eye but I was very lucky I didn’t lose my life; he said.

“That incident made me much more aware of risks - even now I can sense accidents about to happen. It also made me want to give something back to the community ~I volunteered my land for air ambulance landings”

It also explains why, almost 10 years ago, he agreed to become a beach guardian at Morfa Bychan, near Porthmadog. It’s one of the few in Wales that cars can be driven onto. Hauling stranded vehicles from the sea, or dragging them from soft dune sand, is a time-honoured role that, over the decades, has been performed by local farmers.

When the former guardian retired, Dafydd was quick to put up his hand. Since then he's always been available to answer Calls from beach wardens, Coastguards and roadside assistance companies whenever a beachgoer finds themselves in trouble.

If they're quick enough, their cars and motorhomes can be saved; if they dally, or attempt a self-rescue, and their vehicles are submerged, all Dafydd can to is recover them to prevent a pollution incident.

Sometimes wife Kathryn, a former nurse, suffers the consequences, such as when a pink VW campervan was submerged in 2020. Brought to the beach for a 1970s-themed photoshoot, both the van and its transporter was swallowed by a fast-rising tide when they wouldn’t budge from the sand.