During the pandemic I developed a condition known as ‘Long-Covid’, an auto-immune illness that severely limits my stamina and ability to get out and enjoy one of my favourite past-times, hill walking.
When local paths are made impassable this can significantly impact our ability to get from place to place and have a direct impact on our health and well-being.
Since the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic many of us will have seen land change hands in our local area and sadly the first action of many new owners is often to restrict access to paths local residents have used for decades.
One of my favourite local walks, prior to lock-down, was to head through Gelliwion Forestry up the Northern flank of Mynydd Y Glyn which rises up behind my house. My personal high point would often be to stop and rest above Gelliwion Farm, admiring the view towards Y Garth and out across the Severn Sea, before making my slow languid descent home through the farm and down the farm track.
On one of the last occasions I walked up there following Covid I found myself feeling fatigued and needing to get home to rest. Opting for the more direct route home across the fields I spied the new owner and wandered over to request permission to continue my progress across the farm, the polite and legal thing to do.
“Yes, you can carry on your way this time. But if I see you up here again…” The implied threat, in an otherwise amicable exchange, is sadly par for the course between a landowner and someone caught walking where they have no permission to be. It can be deeply unpleasant, but we accept it because we’ve been conditioned to.
Gelliwion Farm is one of several rural properties on the edge of Pontypridd which have changed hands in recent years and which have become virtual no-go areas for those of us who like to enjoy the hills and valleys around our town.
During the Covid pandemic we all learned just how important it is that people have access to the land on their doorstep for our health and well-being. Yet lockdown also saw a spike in land sales, new fencing being erected, and keep out signs closing off footpaths; official and unofficial paths people have enjoyed for decades.
The net result is a significant limiting of the places those of us without land can go to get away from things. Across the valley, when the new owners of Bryn Golau farm took up residence the private property signs were the first to go up. And more and more of the land around our town is becoming inaccessible.
In more recent years several lots of land have changed hands above Graigwen. In at least two cases it wasn’t long before their new owners installed fencing, gates and keep out signs. Acres of land much loved and used by the local community for walking, picnics and recreation have become places where residents are no longer free to roam.
Between Graigwen & Glyncoch several fields which were highly valued by local residents, one of the few areas of open land easily accessible from the community of Glyncoh, have been fenced off by Heidelberg materials to extend the Craig Yr Hesg quarry. A strong Stop the Quarry campaign has been established to fight this.
When you add it all up, we’ve lost access to quite a large acreage of land where people were once free to walk and enjoy unhindered. I no longer make my way up Mynydd Y Glyn, through Gelliwion Forestry to make my gentle way home through Gelliwion Farm. But I have a new favourite walk, and yes, that involves trespass too.
Tir Pontypridd is a local member-led charitable Community Benefit Society set up explicitly to secure land for the local community nature and biodiversity. It is this loss of access that Tir Pontypridd aims to stem and wherever our members need support to challenge the loss of access where they live, we will support them to do so.
And with any land purchase we make we will work with our local communities to secure and improve public rights of access to the land around our town. If our communities can raise their own funds to buy the lands which surround them, then it will be for our communities themselves to decide what happens with them.
Ken
