Stanage Edge

Tourism brings traffic. In upland or rural areas that means private motor vehicles as there are often few viable alternatives. But private cars bring problems that damage the very places that visitors are coming to see. Verges get trashed, lanes get blocked, farmers get obstructed but providing for car borne visitors with acres of parking for summer weekends wouldn’t do much for the landscape either.

Pontneddfechan

Car borne visitors tend not to invest in the area they visit. They drive in. Park up. Block parking for others. Go walking or mountain biking. Eat butties and drink from a thermos in their car. Drive home. In Pontneddfechan, which has a couple of pubs, the average visitor spend was 49p, and in Tal y Bont on Usk their cars would use roadside parking that the pubs needed.

Elgol to Broadford (in another country)

Rural buses are a declining resource. In the Waterfalls area of the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) we participated in a feasibility study for introducing a new service using visitor data we assembled for our earlier Waterfalls project.

Existing rural controlled parking area at The Roaches in Staffordshire

Farmers are often willing to let visitors park in their fields for a fee. This only works if it is difficult to park on highway in the surrounding area necessitating a controlled parking area with a residents’ parking scheme. We proposed one for the Waterfalls area of the Brecon Beacons but this foundered as Powys Council still wanted to charge residents. Not that it stops some farmers from charging where it is physically impossible to park on the surrounding roads.

Henderson Hall, Tal-y-Bont on Usk, Village Hub and Bike Hub

Villages sometimes have facilities from which they can run a business to benefit tourists and bring money in. In Tal y Bont on Usk we proposed that the villagers exploited their village hall to provide services to muddy mountain bikers which also encouraged drivers to use the hall car park rather than blocking the main village street.

Four Falls Walk – Bannau Brycheiniog

Popular rural tourist spots attract people who are not attuned to the countryside and are uncertain about unmarked footpaths. Good signing and waymarking is essential to give them confidence and also to ensure they find their way back to their cars. Our Waterfalls work included a waymarking strategy.