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 important though the tranquillity of the landscape of such areas is, the communities and people who live in them are even more important; without a viable economy the lifeblood quickly haemorages from the countryside. Then the young, able, and ambitious have to move elsewhere to find employment and the insidious process of rural depopulation follows its inevitable course. Houses which were once occupied by families are sold as retirement or holiday homes, and slowly but surely the vitality of the community ebbs away, as shops and schools close.
Of course you cannot have an airfield that operates silently, but for the people who live in this area the sound of aircraft taking off and landing is as familiar to them as the waves crashing on the seashore or the rattle and clatter of trains on the Cambrian Coast railway line. The life of the airfield has become the heartbeat of this village, a symptom of its good health, and when that faltered four years ago there were grave fears for its future.
In fact it is likely that there will be far less aircraft noise in the future than there has been in the recent past when most of the aeroplanes operating from Llanbedr were jets. The prospective owners are far more interested in catering for light aircraft and these, of course, are relatively quiet and unobtrusive. There is now an opportunity for new life to be breathed into the village.
This is not to everyone’s liking, but what few objections there are come from a very strange quarter. The Snowdonia Society, which operates as a watchdog body with a remit for protecting and enhancing the national park, has launched a campaign to try and prevent normal operational activity returning to the airfield. Here is what their director, Alun Pugh, told The Independent newspaper.
“The Welsh government has a legal obligation to promote sustainable development and we’re not sure flying lessons and pleasure flights fit in with that. As an environmental charity we are concerned that redeveloping the site as a commercial airport is wholly contrary to the statutory purposes of national parks.”
“Tourism is the number one industry in north-west Wales,” said Mr Pugh. “People come to Snowdonia to seek peace and quiet reflection in a world-class landscape. Nobody comes to a national park to be assaulted by aircraft noise and climate-changing pollution.”
Mr Pugh, who was only appointed in January, seems unaware of the previous scale of operations at the airfield, using jet aircraft, up until just four years ago. Tourism in the area has increased exponentially during the lifetime of the airfield and one of the most beautifully situated, popular and successful camping grounds in Wales (Shell Island) is on its boundary.
The underlying reasons for opposing Kemble Air Services’ plans would seem to be the current fashion among environmentalists for ‘aviation bashing’. This might be justified if the Snowdonia Society had been set up for such purposes, but it was not. Its founders were concerned that not only the landscape of the national park should be protected, but also the way of life that of the people who are fortunate enough to live in it. And people cannot live in an economic vacuum.
Long before the Snowdonia Society or the Snowdonia National Park came into being, aircraft were using the airfield at Llanbedr and the surrounding airspace. All that is being proposed is a restoration of the status quo, albeit on a somewhat reduced scale of operations.
I have been a member of the Snowdonia Society for many years and recognise that in the past it has served a very valuable and responsible function in the life of the area. So far as I am aware, the membership were not consulted about this ill-considered campaign until after it was launched, and serious damage has already been caused to the society’s reputation as a result.
If, heaven forbid, the Snowdonia Society should succeed in disrupting the present proposals, it would be interesting to know what purpose a derelict airfield will serve in ‘enhancing’ the national park or the lives of those of us who live in it.
Note: A few copies of the first edition of Wendy Mills’ excellent history of the airfield, Target Rolling, are still available from Midland Publishing. A new updated edition is expected at the end of the year.
Could not have put it better! A derelict airfield would be horrendous.
Ive been visiting shell island and surrounding area for the last 25 years for holidays and long weekend. I have read your post and i could not have put it in words any better.
Watching the jets come in and out of llanbedr was fastinating and although you heard them, they always filled you with aww. Having the airport open to light aircraft and microlights will only boost the local economy and turn a what is now a derelict ghost into a living body once again.
Frostman
Frostman:
I look down on the airfield every afternoon when I walk round our fields and it makes me sad to see it in its present state. For the last four years I have been hoping that this would happen.
I could not agree more with Tony N. I hope all who are supporting the new development will have succes. It is strange that some people who have lived here for a long time can prefer to see empty shells and dereliction to vibrant life in our community.
In the last week we at shell island have collected over 300 signatures for the petition for the airfield, and it hasnt really been busy!!
We will continue to get more over the next few weeks when it is busy, but so far over 1200 have been gathered from the local area, our MP and Welsh Assembly member are behind the project.
Firstly, apparently, the snowdonia sociaty man doesn’t live around here, ive heard flintshire!!!
Secondly, The people from this S.S. arn’t ellected by people from this area like councilors, MP’s etc but by there own members of which there are only 2500 members, some of whom probably dont live around here!!
My house is inline with one of the runways and within 1 mile and i dont mind it reopening one bit. Lets face it anything run by the goverment has iether been privatised or finished altogether.
After reading the “Aircraft movements” in the last few years of the airfield being open I was surprised as was my dad. We didnt think it was that many, and dont forget the fuel was paid then by taxpayers!! not private people, so I cant see that many movements a year.
An Airfield is what we need because if it doesnt open as one it will have to be opened as something else, because the Welsh assembly paid a lot of notes for it. FACT!!
So What are the other options,
I dont want to think about them but our nearest is in liverpool, and the other two words that people say when they dont have a passport when they get to the uk!!
Richard:
Very many thanks for that.
Have been coming to Shell Island for many years and have loved watching the jets as have the children. It is sad to see the airfield in its present state.
Quote from unofficial site (not my quote but agree)
“I always thought one of the attractions of Shell Island WAS the airfield and the planes coming in low and loud, I certainly missed them when the airfield closed. The airfield has been there for as long as the majority of the campers have been (longer in some cases),so the buzzing of light aircraft should be welcome. Also,we have got so used to flying kites after 5 o’clock and weekends,it doesn’t feel right flying them during the day!!! “
Rosemary:
Exactly! When QineiQ gave up the contract the village suddenly seemed terribly quiet, and not in a nice way at all.
Before I moved down here to live I camped on Shell for years. My son and I used to love sitting on the footpath watching the jets doing fly-bys. Also the jyndaviks (sp?)it was great to see those too.
When camping we never found the sounds intrusive so light aircraft would be just a ‘whisper’ surely.
I as a pilot will certainly be bringing my Family to the area for day trips and weekend stays purely on the basis of what would be normally be a three hour drive by car to get to this fantastic part of Wales is now a twenty minute flight by light aircraft. Surely better for the environment as many modern light aircraft use less fuel than a 4 X 4 car.
Re: #11, Vaughan
One of the Kemble people told me that he flew his microlight up here last week in 57 mins using just on 15 litres of fuel. I certainly couldn’t make it to Kemble in a Saab with that kind of fuel consumption.
I’m probably going to upset a few people by giving an opposing view here.
I live near Welshpool, and can tell you that the peace and quiet of the countryside in a 10-mile radius of the town has been utterly shattered – particularly at weekends – by the constant noise of light aircraft using the recently opened Mid-Wales airport. A huge number of people round here are deeply resentful of this, and are angered that their entitlement to a reasonably noise-free existence is being ruined just so a bunch of mostly rich businessmen can enjoy their polluting, unsustainable and fairly pointless hobby.
We also camp at Shell Island regularly, and love it for its peaceful setting, and its proximity to the stunning Rhinog mountains – some of the best walking country in Wales. However, if the Welshpool experience is to be repeated at Llanbedr, we certainly won’t be going there again.
The dune complex at Llanbedr adjoining the airfield is an SSSI, and one of the best of its kind in the UK. If we had a more civilized and imaginative lot in our Assembly, they would have taken the opportunity to completely close down the airfield, take out the runways and buildings, and let nature take its beautiful course. But no, yet again the Welsh countryside is going to be used as a playground for petrolheads from all over Britain, and to hell with climate change!
The fact that the airfield has been used for a long time for noisy jets is not really relevant – the fact is that it has now closed, and the opportunity should have been taken to keep it closed. Pleasure flights and flying lessons have no place in the Snowdonia National Park, and anyway, anyone who thinks that this sort of activity is going to bring a lot of jobs or money into the area is totally mistaken. There will be very few jobs indeed, and the money will be lining very few pockets.
Re: #13
How well do you know this area and how long have you been coming here?
Tony, I know the area well, and have been a regular visitor for the best part of thirty years – but what’s that got to do with the issue? It really annoys me when I hear people going on about ‘people from outside the area’ or ‘visitors’ or ‘newcomers’ and so on, as if that disqualifies them from having a legitimate viewpoint.
The fact is, we’re living on a very small planet, one that’s seing its resources, wildlife and natural environment destroyed on an unprecedented scale – for example, it was announced yeaterday that the world has lost between a quarter and a third of its wildlife since 1970. That’s just 38 years!
We desperately need to be reducing, not increasing, our use of fossil fuels, and the frivolous use of any sort of motorised transport – such as is being proposed for Llanbedr – is quite simply foolish and inexcusable, doubly so in a National Park.
And that’s quite apart from the fact that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find anywhere peaceful and unspoiled to refresh our spirits these days, without the incessant intrusion of engine noise etc.
You talk about ‘aviation bashing’ – do you never ask yourself why people are turning in their droves against aircraft noise and pollution?
Although I’m not a member of the Snowdonia Society, I fully support Mr Pugh – the statement you quoted at the top of this blog says it all really.
What is your interest in seeing Llanbedr re-opened as a privately run airfield anyway? As I said before, forget about any significant benefit to the local community, there really won’t be any, apart from the usual handful of entrepreneurs who stand to make money from it. Are you by any chance one of them?
Re: #15
Llanbedr airfield has been silent for just four years out of the thirty years during which you have been coming here, so I am at a loss to know why its re-opening should put you off now.
If I gave the impression that I was criticising your comment because you do not live in the area I apologise. That was not my intention.
The ever increasing need for aviation facilities would suggest that this is not the case.
Sadly, I am not an entrepreneur, nor am I connected with the airfield in any way. My reasons for wishing to see it operating properly again are stated perfectly clearly in my original post.
In answer to your first paragraph Tony, we’ve been re-discovering the joys of Shell Island camping out of season more over the last few years – before that it was more the walking in the Rhinogau and surrounding area which was the attraction. The jet noise from Llanbedr was always pretty grim, but at least one felt it had some sort of plausible purpose, i.e. the national defence (though I’m sure many will take issue with that!)- and it has been so wonderful since it stopped!
The new use by private aircraft will have no such excuse, and believe me when I say that if it really gets going, those of you who live nearby will rue the day you ever supported this project. Sure, some people will enjoy watching little aeroplanes & helicopters taking off and landing all day, but a lot more will find the constant drone of low-flying aircraft to be an annoying and intrusive nuisance in such a beautiful area. Just ask anyone who lives near Welshpool airport (or any other small airport come to that).
In the end, it will cause the same sort of ‘centrifugal blight’ that windfarms are causing – the decent people who care about and defend a relatively unspoiled countryside environment move away, and their place is taken by the sort of people (usually ex city-dwellers) who don’t really care, or worry about, a world being taken over by machines and concrete. And you end up with the usual downward spiral – once an area is blighted by this sort of development, it becomes increasingly difficult to defend it against a whole host of other detrimental planning applications. This defeats the whole raison d’etre for National Parks in the first place.
Incidentally, I wonder how many of the supporters of this scheme are, like Alun Pugh, Welsh, and from the area?!
Re: #17, Jo
At least we can agree about the wind turbines. See here and elsewhere on this blog:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=5
So far as Alun Pugh is concerned, had he been local he would not have got the Snowdonia Society into the mess it is in at the moment. See his entry at Wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alun_Pugh
At a meeting about this wretched business in the village hall on Friday only very few of those present were not welsh speakers. I have never known this village so united and so angry.
Yes, sorry I meant … from the area, and like Alun Pugh, Welsh.
But whatever, I don’t understand why so many people appear to want this. It won’t bring more than a handful of jobs, so surely a better use could have been found for it. I assume that before the airfield’s construction, it was countryside – and that’s what it should go back to (fat chance!).
It seems to me that the usual thing is happening here. Businessmen dangle the prospect – however unlikely – of jobs and money in front of rural communities, and everyone believes them. Reason flies out of the window.
As long as society believes that constant growth & development is essential to the well-being of mankind, we’re stuffed, good and proper!
By the way, I find it very depressing the way the National Park authorities tend to be treated as public enemy no.1 by so many people, who see them just as an obstacle to their making money. The same thing happens in Pembrokeshire. In fact, although they have their faults, they are the only barrier to the complete ruination of Britain’s last remaining areas of reasonably unspoilt natural beauty.
I’ve said this on other forums, people who are born & bred in the area of Llanbedr are the ones who should have a final say on this, other people (like myself) can have their opinions heard tho! My opinion is that it’s “always” (yes I know 70 years or so isn’t always) been an airport so unless they have got a secret plan for a new Ringway what’s the problem? Also it’s very well saying let go of the internal cumbustion engine but we all have to live (& work hopefully) in the real world. As someone who left school in Liverpool to the real prospect of never working (apart from a YTS scheme, remember those) the value of even a handful of created jobs CANNOT be belittled! As it happened thanks to a Militant tendency council at the time I did find employment but many friends at the time didn’t & unemployment leads to all manor of social problems that no area should have to suffer!!
This doesn’t just affect Llanbedr – the whole of Snowdonia will be plagued by pleasure flights and buzzing microlites. The indescribable joy of walking in silent mountain landscapes will be a thing of the past. But it seems to me that’s the last thing bothering the subscribers to this forum.
Re: 21, Jo
The idea that the whole of the national park will be swarming with aircraft as soon as Kemble take over is a scare story that the Snowdonia Society seem to have propagated as part of their campaign.
For many years there has been a busy private airfield at Llanwnda, just outside the the NE boundary of the national park. This is significantly closer to Snowdon and its main satellite ranges than Llanbedr. The skies over these mountains are not full of light aircraft.
Private aircraft tend to avoid mountains in the same way that ships avoid shoals.
Re: #20, popmacca
Its good to know that someone who visits the area understands the issues, particularly the importance of a ‘handful of jobs’, full time and not seasonal, in an place like this. Thanks
Llanbedr Airfield is ideally situated on a peninsular that thus permits the approach, climbout and circuit patterns to be mostly over the sea and therefore not a nuisance to local residents. During the fifteen years that I worked in Operations at Llanbedr Airfield I found that the purpose of many visitors to Shell Island and the Llanbedr area was for plane-spotting.
The pilots of light aircraft usually enjoy Snowdonia most by following the coastline and/or flying high and therefore almost un-noticeably. Any aircraft flying low in Snowdonia is likely to be a rescue helicopter or a military training jet.
Does Jo appreciate that the right to operate UAVs from Llanbedr Airfield continues in our defence interests anyway and that Llanbedr’s R&D aviation history has played a key role in her present freedom of speech?
May I suggest that Jo puts a trial flying lesson in a light aircraft from Welshpool on her birthday wish list and opens her mind to the joy and wonder of flight and the part it sensibly plays in our 21st century lives in so many ways.
[TonyN: Wendy was too modest to mention that she is also the author of Target Rolling, an excellent history of the airfield.]
Tony & Wendy – forgive me for making assumptions about you, but you both appear to be intelligent, educated people, the very sort who should be leading by example the effort to combat global warming, air and noise pollution, and certainly any potential damage to our National Parks. What on earth are you doing supporting this outrageous proposal?
I don’t know what, if any, personal gain you will be making if it goes ahead – are you perhaps private pilots? – but if you are in fact putting your own enjoyment or gain before the wider interests of the environment, you must surely realise that this is morally indefensible, and extremely selfish.
It has been a very good thing for the whole area that the airfield has closed down – the reduction in aircraft noise and pollution in such a sensitive location can only be welcomed by those who truly care about the environment, and the appalling damage we are doing to this little planet in such a short space of time.
Despite what you both say, there is no doubt whatsoever that the reopening of Llanbedr as a private airfield will increase the number of aircraft overflying the National Park, the amount of traffic coming into the area, and the number of petrolheads who just want to use this beautiful area for their own selfish and unsustainable pleasure. There is much more at stake here than the interests of the people of Lanbedr, and the damage that will be done to Snowdonia and the wider area of NW Wales will far outweigh the benefits that will be brought by the very few jobs that Kemble are likely to offer. On this subject, don’t forget that almost every business trying to get planning consent etc will always promise a level of job creation that in the event, almost without exception, fails to materialise.
Wendy – (by the way I’m a he not a she!)- I have flown from Welshpool several times, but I didn’t really need the experience to convince me that the vast majority of aircraft flights, whether private or commercial, are not really necessary to the wellbeing of mankind, and are widely acknowledged to be one of the most unsustainable and damaging of all human activities. My advice to you is to get out of your polluting and noisy machine (whatever that may be) and use your legs to take you into peaceful and wonderful natural places, and benefit your mind and body!
You mention that you felt that many visitors to Shell Island and Llanbedr came for plane-spotting. What sad gits. They are just the sort of people we don’t want coming to our National Parks.
TonyN: Gratuitous insults are not arguments: ‘I don’t know what, if any, personal gain you will be making’, ‘sad gits’. See blog rules.