We pulled up over the sunlit, topmost rocks of Tryfan's north peak to look down 2,000ft, on to the shimmering face of Llyn Ogwen. Across the valley, beyond the shiny lake, a heather fire sent a curling column of mauve-grey smoke across the side of Pen yr Oleu-wen. Cars were parked beside the Holyhead high road, east of Ogwen, but they were barely visible, hidden by roadside hedging and small trees. It made recent proposals by local councils and the Snowdonia National Park Authority all the more ludicrous; a suggestion to turn all the northern part of the National Park into a massive clearway, only allowing car parking in a handful of "gateway" car parks. From these visitors would have to use buses or walk.
The outcome of this nonsensical proposal, if it ever became a reality, would be to drive visitors away. With its emphasis on control and urban thinking, it is just what people are trying to escape from when they come here. Instead of a return visit, many will opt for Lakeland or the Highlands. Instead of welcoming roadside parking in suitable places (hidden from the high places by tree planting, as beside the Holyhead road east of Ogwen, or by earthworks and stone walling), the National Park Authority has long adopted a bunker mentality and frozen extra parking provision.
If frustrated visitors are, in future, confronted by wardens waving parking tickets, the whole ethos of the National Parks Act will be compromised. Instead of "securing the provision of access for open air recreation", the proposers of this scheme would impose regulations appropriate to urban environments and so contradict the spirit of the place. As David Woodford, distinguished landscape artist and local inhabitant, has recently stated: "The scheme defines the public, including the local population, as consumer, not as friend... We must always measure these places by the human happiness they afford. They are not for plunder as a pawn in a commercial process."
Traversing south from Tryfan's north peak, over the rocky spine of the main and south summits and down to Bwlch Tryfan, our only companions were the handful of Welsh Mountain ewes and their well-grown lambs, which linger up here during these golden days before winter drives them down into Cwm Bochlwyd. It was sad to look across to the crisp profiles of Y Garn and Foel Goch and think that the National Park Authority could possibly believe in their ill-considered proposal.
