It’s not often that rural communities get good news these days. Foot and Mouth disease, Blue Tongue, rural poverty and crime, pitifully small farm incomes and the rising costs of transport seem to crowd into the headlines on a regular basis. So it is a pleasure to be able to report some good news for a change.

Four years ago, the airfield at Llanbedr, on the shores of Cardigan Bay in North Wales’ beautiful Snowdonia National Park, ran into difficulties after QinetiQ gave up their lease. In spite of a long and determined campaign to find a new operator it is only in the last week that we have heard that Kemble Air Services is planning to start operations before the end of the summer.

The airfield has been a part of life in Llanbedr for nearly seventy years, so few people alive today can remember a time when it was not part of the community; several generations of some families having worked there. Servicemen who were stationed here when it was an RAF station during and after WWII have married local girls and come to live in the village. Others who came here in the course of their careers have been reluctant to leave an area that had become their home and have settled in and around Llanbedr when they retired.

There is undoubtedly something incongruous about celebrating the contribution an airfield has made to a national park, but Continue reading »