Dad and his young son abandon barbecue after spotting 'puma' on Gwynedd beach

A dad and his young son had to abandon their barbecue after seeing a "puma" prowling the area. Jimmy Butler and his nine-year-old son both saw a "brown or tawny puma" while setting up a barbeque on the beach near Gimblet Rock two weeks ago.

It comes just weeks after a group of fishermen at the same beach spotted an animal matching the same description. During the most recent sighting, the pair had planned to spend the evening stargazing on May 12 when the young boy spotted the animal.

Initially, they thought it was a large dog, but Mr Butler said he quickly realised that this wasn't the case. Having reported the sighting to Puma Watch, he said: "My lad grabbed me and said ‘what is that? is it a dog?’ When I looked I first thought ‘yeah’ but quickly realised this wasn't the case.

"I panicked and made a bit of noise to which the cat quickly disappeared. We left straight away.

"Apologies for leaving the bbq on the beach but was no way I was hanging around. We got back to the car and there was a local about to go fishing and I told him what happened and he said he’d heard of four or five sightings of the same description in the last few weeks.

“A very surreal experience. I didn’t think they were even in this country!”