Out with bureaucrats, let people explore
IMPOSING a £7.50 charge on the car park at Pen y Fan is very typical of the attitudes of the national parks authorities.
They actually hate visitors and make any excuse to prevent them.
We live in a country where not enough people take exercise, so of course, the exclusivist national parks want to discourage those who do.
And they are supported by the environmental movement, for whom the countryside is an exclusive preserve to be enjoyed only by the elite.
Of course, they say they want visitors – actually they just want their money.
Visitors are only wanted on their terms, packed on buses and drilled to walk only in permitted places.
It is very obvious that people will head for special places, so why not cater for them?
Near Pen y Fan there is a vast amount of parking, from the main car park all the way down to the reservoirs there are broad road edges which can be, and often (unofficially) are, turned into parking on a vast scale.
So why not do it properly and make real space, and add facilities?
If people can easily visit popular places they may also look at others and be prompted to explore, to all our benefit.
I wonder if we really need bodies like the national parks, greedy bureaucracies, indifferent to the needs of ordinary people and welcoming only the “right thinking”.
Perhaps their ideal is a Berlin Wall to keep people out (except the favoured few).
I think the Welsh Government, which says it believes in access and exercise, should look closely at these petty bureaucrats and perhaps consider radical change.
Prof John France West Cross, Swansea