Team picked to sort new national park in Wales
Gillespies will work alongside Countryscape and Fiona Fyfe Associates to help Natural Resources Wales source the location of a fourth national park.
The new national park would be somewhere in the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. NRW had gone out to tender earlier this year for consultants who could assist them in figuring out what a future park’s borders would look like.
Landscape planner Gillespies will lead the team in researching, conducting field studies, and providing assessments to potential sites. Each option will be evaluated based on its options for open-air recreation as well as its natural beauty.
Countryscape is bringing its mapping and landscape ecology expertise to the team, while Fiona Fyfe will utilise its skills in assessing protected and historic landscapes.
If a new national park is designed for Wales, it will be the first since 1957. The three other national parks in Wales are Eryri (formerly Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire Coast, and Bannau Brycheiniog (formerly Brecon Beacons).
Elsewhere in the North West, Gillespies is assessing Cheshire’s Sandstone Ridge for potential Area of National Beauty status. The firm is also crafting a landscape strategy for St Cuthbert Garden Village, after its Greenway Ribbon concept won a competition last year.
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Interesting to note that the Welsh Assembly is rowing back on its damaging 20mph speed limit. A 33% drop in visitor numbers has finally forced them to wake up to the harm they were doing the tourism industry, and to the wider weaknesses of Wales’s economy. Meanwhile, nothing like a new national park to allow them to fiddle a bit more whilst Cymru burns.
By Anonymous
This is great news. I think the Wales tourist website currently call the area ‘North East Wales’ which hardly helps encourage visitors to such a beautiful area.
By Anonymous
Nouveau colonialism: Creating free playgrounds for the better off in someone else’s country, adding more costs and restrictions for locals and making house prices even more out of reach for local people. So much for Labour being socialists! Catering for the leisure of the better-off middle classes by categorising someone else’s country while abandoning the real needs of the working classes (notwithstanding the tourism opportunities of low/minimum wage seasonal jobs…or perhaps they could just sell beads on the roadside). Disgraceful how far Labour has moved from its socialist roots to suck up to the well-off elite
By Anonymous
There’s no need for another national park with all the rules & red tape hampering what farmers & locals can & can’t do. Waste of time & money. How much is this costing the people of Wales given the cost of living crisis at the moment?
By Anonymous
I would like to be informed and kept updated in relation to the proposed National Park by Gillespie’s please, as the photo in the article actually includes the farm I have part ownership of.
By Jon Bond, E mail 'jon-bond@hotmail.co.uk'
The Breidden Hill near Middletown near Welshpool is a magical mountain with outstanding views with two monuments, the host monument and Rodney’s pillar, with a great walk to the top Roman fort. It’s small but totally magical. Birds of Prey circle the mountain top, incredible species of butterflies and I see deer roaming about.
By Anonymous
Will the new National fall in line with Beacons n Snowdonia and have a Welsh name.
Also when is Pembroke National Pk following suit ?
By Richard
The school’s in wales have leaking roofs
NHS is falling apart
Rates that pay for the National parks are to high
Wales is broke we need to develop industry
How you can even think of a new national park when the present national parks stifle wales and the young people of wales are leaving
You really frighten me for the future of wales
By Mansel Thomas
Waste of Money. Spend it on the NHS. I recently had a heart attack and there was no ambulance, I had to get a lift to hospital!
By Alan
I am working on a plan to persuade Gillespies/NRW/WG to include Brenig reservoir in the new proposed NP. This is based on the idea that the original boundaries suggested at the ‘pop in’ sessions are not ideal for a NP’s duty to provide quiet outdoor recreation. Brenig has walking, cycling, fishing, sailing, horse riding, bird watching, good archaeology, a ready made visitor centre with café, limitless parking, and a small children’s play area.
Including Brenig would reduce pressure on honeypot CPs in the existing NL.
Brenig would become the first attraction for young families visiting the new NP.
Finally, Brenig even has its own osprey !
By Mike Skuse