For most businesses the past two years have been one of the most difficult periods in living memory.
For Frank and Danielle Sheahan the pandemic has hit particularly hard. While hotels can now welcome guests without limiting capacity, festivals can attract thousands of revellers and even nightclub dancefloors are full, their idyllic retreat remains empty.
The couple have run the West Usk Lighthouse in Newport for over 20 years.
And despite Wales being at alert level zero, the rural 1820s lighthouse on the Severn Estuary has still not welcomed back any visitors.
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Normally couples and families flock to enjoy its many quirks including the the stone spiral staircase leading to a rooftop hot tub.
But instead the business has had almost no income.
"We’ve always been very welcoming, as you have to be with a bed and breakfast. But we cannot see a way to keep ourselves safe, as well as the guests," said Frank Sheahan, who opened the lighthouse with his wife Danielle in 1990.
"You can’t really self-isolate, have this two-metre distance, when you’ve got people in your house - it’s just too impractical.
"Even if we were just letting one room, it wouldn’t be commercially viable. If you had two couples in, how you’d keep them apart, and then you have to sanitise this and that. With the hot tub on the roof, which is very popular, you can’t offer that to the guests unless you empty the whole hot tub each time it’s used, which is totally impractical."
Starved of their usual income, Frank said the couple decided to "keep their heads down" and purchased their own wedding marquee last year. They'd been hosting weddings for years, but saw owning their own marquee as a way of bringing in more cash in the absence of overnight guests.
He said the couple had some savings which enabled them to muddle through, but that this had its limits.
“You can put some money aside for a rainy day, but no-one puts money aside for a rainy 18 months," he said.
"So financially, we are right up against it.”
Frank said the business received some financial support from both the Welsh Government and local government, as well as taking out a small business loan of £17,500.
They were due to start paying that back but have managed to delay it for six months, as they’ve not had the takings to start repaying it.
"It’s about £300 a month. If you’re open and trading, then you can afford to do that. We are up against it, but we are hoping the wedding side of the business is going to manage to keep us afloat.”
Frank and Danielle bought the lighthouse when it was semi-derelict in 1987. Working in London for a record company at the time, Frank and Danielle, a college lecturer, moved to Newport in 1989 and got married in the grounds of the lighthouse in July that year. By February 1990, they’d transformed the lighthouse into a habitable building, and opened it to the public as a bed and breakfast that March.
“We’d quit our jobs, burnt our bridges, bought this semi-derelict lighthouse in Wales. People in London thought - what were we doing?" he remembered.
While the pandemic has been hard for the business, they're no strangers to major disruptions.
“Within a week of opening first, we were flooded," Frank said. "The water hit the old sea defences here, spilt over. It slowly came through the front door, and we barricaded it. We have an old collecting well in the centre of the lighthouse, which we directed the water to. It took about 3,800 gallons of water.
“We managed to survive. The insurance company did pay up quite quickly, which we were pleased about, because they can be notoriously poor on that score.
“That money helped us to carry on for that year, by which time we had the business up and running. Without the flood, I don’t think we would have survived, actually."
The business, located just 30 feet from the water of the Severn Estuary, was also impacted by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001. The crisis hit agriculture and tourism hard, with people being discouraged from going to the countryside.
It also had to close for nearly a year in 1997 while the environmental agency carried out work on sea defences.
“We did eventually get some compensation, but it took us about three years to get the money out of them. We were living on credit cards.
“We’ve been battered. We’re no stranger to adversity," Frank said lightheartedly.
The B&B, which appeared on the programme The Hotel Inspector in 2008, and again in 2019, and has also been a filming location for Doctor Who, has been trying desperately to stay afloat through wedding bookings. But these, too, have been impacted by the pandemic.
“Between March last year and July this year, I had one wedding," Frank said. "I managed to get a wedding in in August last year, which only gave me £800, and that was it. All the other weddings were either cancelled or we just couldn’t do them.
“I think it was limited to 10 or 15 people and one stage. People just didn’t want that, you know. I must have had about ten weddings that were cancelled.
“So you’ve lost out on the income, which you’re relying on just to survive, but people want their £500 deposits back too. It’s one of those things. Some of them have been good enough to say they’d get married the next year. So we did have some of that, which was good.”
Things have been slightly better since Wales began to relax its Covid rules, with four weddings held at the venue in July and August.
"We had obviously more booked, but with couples not knowing what the future was holding, I think we had seven or eight cancellations.
“They wanted their deposits back, so we had to take a hit on that. That was very hard.
“The weddings have paid for the marquee, which is great. But I certainly need more weddings."
Frank said he already had “four or five” booked for 2022 and was hoping the number would grow.
“I’d hope to do about 20 weddings next year, if I can.”
The lack of visitors is a crying shame for such a picturesque location with so many little quirks.
There's the bar used for weddings, which Frank sourced on eBay for £500. It was previously owned by a former footballer whose name escapes him, and features a light-up mirror with an image of Wembley (“It’s a talking point”, he chuckled.)
There's the Doctor Who Dalek, a souvenir which actually marks another historic threat to the guesthouse.
About 15 years ago, the lighthouse's future was thrown into doubt by the proposed route for the M4 relief road, which would have run right across the top of the lighthouse.
“It would have been the end of us really. I was chatting to one of our guests and he thought it was outrageous.
“He said he had a Doctor Who Dalek in his garage and a six-year-old who was scared stiff of it. He said if I paid the transport and a free night’s bed and breakfast that I could use it in a campaign to fight the proposals.
“I said yes, not thinking much of it.
“He dropped it off and it became the symbol for the protest. We took it on marches, pointed the ray gun at the plans.”
The road was eventually scrapped.
“People were very pleased. The Dalek must have stopped it,” he laughed.
The lighthouse also has a tardis, previously used as a changing room for the hot tub and now a toilet for the wedding marquee.
“I don’t know whether to call it Doctor Loo or the Turdis,” Frank laughed.
Frank has also been renovating an outbuilding at the property for newlywed couples to stay in.
“With that being revamped, we would be able to have the bride and groom stay overnight, and it would be all self-contained with its own shower, kitchenette etc.”
The uninterrupted views of the Severn Estuary from the room will be spectacular when finished.
Frank said this may be the only way forward - at least in the immediate future - for those who want to stay overnight.
He and his wife won't be revisiting their decision on not having guests until next year.
“It seems that self-catering has been very, very popular. I think people are very reluctant to share breakfast tables with total strangers at the moment. So that’s the way to go, and we’re doing that at the moment.
"Last year we personally didn’t know anybody at all who had Covid. This year, we know loads of people that have had it, or people that have known people that have died of it.
“My wife is not comfortable having paying guests coming into our home, which is totally understandable.
"Many hotels are not now offering breakfast or are only offering it in guests’ rooms, which isn't what a B&B is about. It’s a more social, chatty, welcoming experience. It’s different from a hotel. It’s more personal, and with Covid you can’t really offer that, or not safely anyway.
“We’ll have a look at it next year and see what the situation is, but I certainly do feel that our plan of action is to concentrate on weddings and have an independent accommodation next to the marquee."
He added that weddings had the additional benefit of being more profitable.
“Bed and breakfast was fun, we’ve had lots of regulars and have actually made friends from it. But from a financial point of view you can put more energy into the weddings and there’s more return financially. It’s hard to actually make a profit with bed and breakfast, I found.
“You’ve got the cost of the food, the cooking, serving, cleaning. Then you’ve got to service all the rooms.
“With a wedding, once you set it up, it’s done.
“The feeling is that Covid’s here for some time, and we’re just not comfortable with strangers coming in."
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