Wales Outdoors Weekly Roundup 16/6/24

And Wales Guided Tours too :)

Wales Outdoors delivered one sunny day waterfall walk this week and attended two tourism business meetings while continuing to fight the battle for fair play against the Welsh Government department Visit Wales.

Waterfalls

It was another lovely day chasing waterfalls. A mixed bag of a group with some very able and some not so, requiring me digging deep into my guiding skills to keep all entertained and happy alongside maintaining group cohesion. But that hard work paid off with a great sense of achievement for some and big smiles and plenty of engaging chat for others.

We had one that went for a dip in the cold waters of the Afon Hepste. I am the only guide that I am aware of that carries and is trained to use a throw line. I also maintain my skills as a Beach Life Guard and I am, again as far as I know, the only guide working in the river environment that could achieve that level of qualification, my colleagues and others not being fast enough swimmers to meet the required timed swims.

Beach Life Guards must complete the following:

'Complete a 400m pool swim in under 7½ minutes, the first 200m of which must be completed in under 3½ minutes. Complete a 25m pool swim underwater and a 25m surface swim consecutively in under 50 seconds. Complete a 200m beach run in under 40 seconds.'

I was therefore the only Coasteering and Gorge Walking business operating in Wales that guaranteed a Mountain Leader and Beach Life Guard present for those activities.

I don't deliver those activities now, just walks, but the skills remain key to quality and safe provision when delivering hikes and tours near water.

Caerphilly Council

I spent lunchtime at the Caerphilly Council offices, very swanky indeed, with bright white spacious interiors and marble flooring containing real fossils.

I met with Councillor Pritchard to discuss matters tourism-related. He reached out to me when I interjected on a social media post of his, a few months back.

I first discussed the appalling level of service (none) that I received from Caerphilly Council staff regarding the onboarding of my business to their Visit Caerphilly site. It took three months and regular attempts at contact (none succeeded) and an intervention by the secretary of Caerphilly Tourism to have my business listed. Read about how difficult it is for businesses to be onboarded by any local authority here -

Moan over and we got onto more constructive matters. I offered up three ideas for the promotion of Caerphilly.

I suggested that when giving grants to cafes for co-working hubs, or any site based business grants, given that Caerphilly has no Tourist information centres, a condition of the grant ought to be to display a Visit Caerphilly poster with a QR code directing interested people to the Visit Caerphilly website.

I also suggested that the free wifi recently launched throughout Caerphilly town centre ought to, upon registration, direct users in the first instance to the Visit Caerphilly website's homepage.

Finally, I suggested Visit Caerphilly ought to have some paper leaflets which are distributed to accommodation hub hotels, so Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Brecon and perhaps further afield.

All in all a constructive meeting and fingers crossed we'll see these ideas bearing fruit over the next few months.

Brecon Beacons Tourism

I've just spent the morning at a chilly meeting of Brecon Beacons Tourism, chilly as it was outdoors and 10 degrees, but useful and entertaining nonetheless. It was held at Alpaca My Boots, a business offering walking with alpacas. The alpacas were watching the proceedings with those gorgeous big eyes of theirs...

I asked Nathan Richards from Visit Wales to explain why the three ministers with responsibility for tourism within the past year, yes, the Welsh Gov is in that much chaos, had failed to answer my rather simple question with regard to the onboarding and promotion of some businesses but not of others and whether he would care, in a public forum, to explain. He said 'No'.

I also asked Nathan whether I could have the new minister's ear for a short while, this coming Thursday, when she will be visiting sites in the Brecon Beacons. He explained she had a busy schedule...

Discussion at the meeting was wide ranging and it was good to meet other operators. From those I chatted to there was widespread dissatisfaction with Visit Wales and real fear of some Welsh government policies, such as the Holiday Let Tax, which will right now be impacting legitimate small businesses in Wales.

Attractions reported that visitor numbers were considerably lower as compared to 2023 and the Brecon Beacons National Park are undertaking another consultation with the likely outcome, forgive me if I'm not correct on this, of guiding electric car owners towards a charging point rich tour of lesser visit locations. Hmmm. And within that mix, the new buzzword, regenerative tourism. Mention was made of the proposed development of a domed damn viewing centre in the Elan Valley and bus services for £1 pp from Merthyr and Brecon to Storey Arms, the Pen y Fan hike start point.

I pointed out the infrastructure issues in Mid Wales and that, in my opinion, shuttle buses are not attractive to hikers, who fear coming off the mountain wet and cold and then waiting at a bus stop...

All in all a pleasant meeting despite Visit Wales's continued intransigence.

You can book our walks and tours through the Wales Outdoors Website.

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