A Car Park that is soon to be made into a Pay and Display. This photo was taken at 8am on a weekday morning last week.
Well I have been totally blown away with the general lack of consideration for the tourist industry that Gwynedd Council seems to have. Generally they have a anti-tourism policy, where they have for some time seemed to do as much as possible to make visitors to what is one of the most wonderful places in the UK not only difficult but at times seemingly insurmountable.
At its worst they will seemingly deliberately send a traffic warden out on on weekend and bank holidays during the summer months only, to target the tourists. Giving the lovely message of hello, welcome to wales, now F! off. Whilst there idea was to make the ‘turn over’ of people parking in the high street greater to get more people in the village, it occassionally take more than 45 minutes to eat in Pete’s Eats during the busiest summer days, let alone enjoy a casual hour or so cruising the high street and shops.
Recently they have added a double yellow lined the Lakeside Lay by, in doing so reduced the total number of vehicles that can park there by at least 10, which may not seem that many, but given that no locals can park near there houses on the high street, means that it is usually part full with locals.
To add injury to insult, and I have to admit that I do park here, so I am biased, but Gwynedd Council now want to charge for parking in every car park in the Llanberis Area. I don’t mean to be funny but they are seemingly oblivious to the tourists, as well as the locals who already have nowhere to park. However, now faced with either pay for somewhere to park or carry on travelling through, my worry is that tourism will fall off and an industry/high street that is already struggling will basically become a ghost town. Do they not realise we are already in the middle of a recession so now is not the time.
What Llanberis needs is more free parking not wall to wall pay and displays, and a council that realises that tourism is the back bone of our economy. They seem to have forgotten the lessons learnt from foot and mouth, and the importance of the Adventure Tourism Industry in North Wales.
Very Subtle planning notices, I would be interested if they are actually in an appropriate place?