Visiting | Aberdovey Londoner

I was so sorry to hear that the excellent Ynyslas Visitor Centre has been threatened with closure by natural Resources Wales, without any public consultation. Fortunately, there is an active campaign to try to keep it open, but it is important that as many people as possible sign the petitions. The Visitor Centre is a terrific resource at the heart of the Ynyslas nature reserve, where I spent many happy hours walking through the sand dunes and collecting shells on the beach. This is a site of special scientific interest, and merits a visitor centre. The Visitor Centre itself is a lovely building where tea, coffee, sticky buns and relevant literature have always been available, together with information about the nature reserve itself.

Here’s the Press Release from the Prevent the Closure team:

Local residents and concerned ‘Ynyslas lovers’ from as far afield as Knighton and Sheffield met with political representatives to express their opposition to Natural Resources Wales (NRW) plans to mothball the award-winning visitor centre, without any consultation or official announcement. Members of the public had only found out about the proposed closure after it was reported that staff had been told not to return to the building after the Christmas break. Elin Jones (Senedd Member) confirmed that she had met with NRW after this, and they informed her they intend to close the Visitor Centre by the end of the financial year.

NRW claimed they would continue with their statutory requirements to protect the site. However, members of the public pointed out that the staff at the centre are integral to protecting wildlife and the environment. They also play an important safety role and are essential to the nature education element of the site. Without proper management and vigilance, the delicate biodiversity at Ynyslas could be destroyed overnight. There is concern over an influx of unregulated campervans, large groups of motorbikes, poachers and people generally not understanding the importance of protecting the dunes.

Attracting over 250,000 visitors a year, Ynyslas is a jewel in Ceredigion’s crown. The estuary is a nesting site for ringed plovers, and there is abundant wildlife in the dunes, including grass snakes, adders and rare orchid varieties.

While NRW are claiming they can close the Visitor Centre without endangering the local ecology, the meeting pointed out this was not the case. NRW have tried to close Ynyslas ‘on the quiet’ due to funding shortages. They are now claiming they are looking for a charity, CIC or commercial organisation to take on the management of the building but, to date, have not put out any such information publicly.

The hastily convened ‘Achubwch ein Canolfan – Ynyslas – Save our Centre’ group opposes the closure and is demanding that NRW meet the local community, discuss their plans transparently and rethink their strategy. The activists are of the opinion that the Visitor Centre and the site as a whole is commercially viable, with parking fees bringing in significant revenues. However, without having met NRW, no one really knows what is going on. The group maintains that the site and the centre are inextricably linked and cannot be separated from each other.

A Change.org petition has garnered almost 5,000 signatures https://www.change.org/p/prevent-the-closure-of-ynyslas-visitor-centre

A petition has also been registered with the Senedd https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/245961

Contact Polly Ernest on 07980 862582 (pollyernest@me.com) for more information.

My father and I decided to take a three-night break in the Aberdovey area. After leaving my home in Aberdovey and moving to the Chester area in February, I decided to take a break for a few months before going back for a flying visit. I wanted to find somewhere self-catering, and near the sea, and the place that ticked all the boxes was in Tywyn. I have taken 100s of photographs of the beach at Aberdovey, walking a long way towards Tywyn, but only rarely took photographs on the beach at Tywyn itself. The beach at Tywyn is so different from that at Aberdovey!

The most obvious difference is the presence of breakwaters, long wooden structures that run from the promenade down into the sea in order to lessen the erosive and carrying impact of waves and cross-currents on a sloping beach, effectively dividing the beach into multiple small sections. When the tide is very high it is impossible to walk along the beach without climbing over the breakwaters, but a promenade along the top of the beach means that the sea can still be enjoyed by dog-walkers, joggers and visitors.

Within these divisions, the differences continue to impress.

There are lovely rock pools with superbly coloured seaweeds floating in them, the rocks sometimes housing colonies of tiny white barnacles. Beyond the rock pools are highly textured sand structures that look a little like coral but are honeycombe reefs, made by the Honeycomb worm (Sabellaria alveolata), which form colonies. The colonies form on hard substrates and they need sand and shell fragments for tube-building activities. They manufacture the tubes from mucus to glue the tiny pieces together. When the tide is out the worms retreat deep into the tunnels, but when the tide covers their reefs their heads protrude and they feed on micro-organisms in the water, including plankton.

There are lots of pebbles, rounded by being rolled in the sea and over sand and other pebbles, a variety of shapes, sizes, colours and textures. There are almost no shells, but there are occasionally limpets, which are only rarely found at Aberdovey, probably due to the lack of rocks for them to cling to. Perhaps because of the breakwaters there is nothing in the way of a strandline capturing oddities from the sea, but this is good news for sun-bathers. The Tywyn beach very definitely has its own personality.

Staying so close to the beach meant that we could walk along it both first thing and last thing, which was a treat. We were so lucky with the weather, and the autumn sun, quite low in the sky, danced wonderfully on the waves. It was cold at each end of the day, but by staying on the move, hypothermia was avoided.

Here are a few of my late afternoon snapshots. There will be more to follow on future posts. The light was simply extraordinary. We’ll be back 🙂