Call to close Snowdon to visitors or ban their cars from area to avoid parking chaos

The Leader of Gwynedd Council has suggested that visitors’ cars could be stopped from coming into the Snowdon area, forcing tourists to park further away and travel in on public transport.

Speaking on Radio Cymru, Dyfrig Siencyn said that the area was suffering from “over-tourism” and that they were “spoiling our rural areas and spoiling our communities”.

His comments come after almost 1,000 people signed a petition to close Snowdon completely until Snowdonia National Park and Gwynedd Council produce a long term strategy to deal with the impact on local people and communities of people visiting to climb the mountain.

Over the weekend more than 500 cars parked on mountain roads in Snowdonia, with people camping in laybys to hike up Snowdon.

Snowdonia National Park Authority said it was holding “urgent talks” to plan and agree on a way forward.

“We need a better answer than this,” Cllr Dyfrig Siencyn said “We potentially need to stop cars coming into the area and forcing them to park further away an come in on shuttle buses.

“We should also look at introducing some kind of tourism tax in order to compensate us for the effort we are having to make in cleaning after them and keeping paths going and so on.

“These are difficult questions and any answer will require large capital spending and we need to ask who pays for that.”

‘Harm’

The petition to close Snowdon said that at a time of worldwide pandemic, closing the mountain would safeguard lives and communities.

“We believe that as a matter of urgency, Snowdonia National Park and Cyngor Gwynedd should now move to close Yr Wyddfa, and its different paths to the summit, to any visitors, be those local or from further afield,” the petition says.

“We acknowledge that there are plenty of car parks in Nant Peris, but we are very concerned and disappointed with the current situation. The National Park and Gwynedd Council need to proceed to implement a new system of managing the flow of traffic and people who are eager to visit Snowdon.

“We further believe that this situation is harming the environmental sustainability of the area. There are also serious questions concerning the ability of emergency services to reach individuals and communities when needed, as they depend on the use of the A4086 to fulfil their duties.

“In signing this petition, we are calling upon Snowdonia National Park and Cyngor Gwynedd to announce that, at a time of a worldwide pandemic, they will now close Yr Wyddfa to safeguard lives and local communities.”