Careful what you stand on in the Dunes

As I’m sure you know by now we are at last having a proper summer. It’s been a while coming -10 years since the last one as far as we can remember – but  it’s here and looks set to stay for a while too.

Weather conditions have been perfect here in West Wales. Whilst everyone else has been sweltering with high humidity and high temperatures, the cooling effects of the sea have kept temperatures at perfect levels here, just into the 20’s and the sea breeze has kept things fresh. Just right for shorts and ‘T’-shirt all day long and not too uncomfortable at night for sleeping.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a grumpy-old-man or a NIMBY, but it has brought people to the beach in droves. Our normal, sleepy little hamlet has been invaded. The usually empty road is busy the whole time and there are cars parked everywhere. The place is full of people and our little space in the world has been taken over by tourists.

The car park at the end of the road seem to be capitalising on it too with car park signs everywhere, flags flying and as we drove into Penparcau Summer Fete on Saturday, there was even a bouncy castle in the car park. Morgan of course asked if he could go on it so jokingly I said:

“Certainly not, we don’t want to encourage that sort of behaviour in Ynyslas”

I was only joking of course and we don’t want to begrudge people enjoying them selves int he sunshines, even if it is in our back-yard – Afterall, we live here because we love it here so we can fully understand why others would like it too. Although, it is completely different when full of people and we much prefer it when it isn’t. What I’m not so sure about though is the fact that they now seem to be allowing people to camp in the car park and charging for it.

Again, this would be OK and I’m not against camp-sites. There are plenty around, including one just across the road from the car park. What is a concerning though is that there are no facilities for the campers in the car park. They are being charged and encouraged to camp there but there are no bins, no toilets and no facilities of any type. We’d like to think that this wouldn’t be a problem but unfortunately not everyone respects their environment the way we do and not everyone looks after the place either – it isn’t their back-yard for a start so they don’t really care. This means that when they leave they often leave their rubbish behind them. Hopefully that will be cleared up by the car park owners, but I dread to think what they are all doing as far as toilet facilities are concerned – I know for sure that some of them are simply using the dunes. As we walked through the car park last night we counted at least 20 camper vans and 20 tents, all with several occupants. That’s at least a hundred people sleeping there, all eating, drinking and making merry. Some will have toilet facilities but those that don’t will need to go somewhere and in the short time we spent walking through we witnessed a couple of people just going in the dunes.

Now that is the sort of behaviour we don’t want to encourage.

All I can say is tread carefully when in the dunes, especially if barefoot.

1 Response

  1. Avatar forComment Author Anonymous says:

    Surely it’s illegal, simple as that!report them

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Avatar forComment Author

Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

You may also like...