SC(3) - AIW35
Sustainability Committee
Inquiry into access to inland water in Wales
What is your interest in the issue of access to inland waterways?
User for waterborne recreation.
Also as a publisher of outdoor adventure books including guidebooks to outdoor activities in Wales.
Are you a member of an organisation related to your use of water?
Welsh Canoe Association.
Which stretch/es of water do you own/use/manage?
I use whitewater rivers all over Wales for kayaking and lakes all over Wales for canoeing and swimming.
Legal rights
Better definition of the legal right of access would not affect my participation in canoe sports (despite threats and objections often from self appointed wardens of fishing beats, none have been able to take action to prevent me kayaking).
However, confusion and discouraging misinformation will put off tourists and recreational users who are keen to discover what outdoor activities they can pursue in Wales. It is our policy, since producing whitewater guidebooks to Scotland immediately prior to the CROW act to continue to publish guidebooks to Welsh and English inland waters on the basis that access over private land may be considered trespass (a civil offense) by unwelcoming landowners and canoeists should behave considerately in those (and all) circumstances, but that passage over natural watercourses is not trespass.
I would like to see a right of passage over all natural watercourses inshrined in law -- to encourage tourism and outdoor recreation in Wales and to silence the threatening behaviour of individuals who currently seek to keep canoeists and other water users off the lakes and rivers of Wales.
Scottish access legislation is the precedent for Wales. Scotland enjoys a boom in outdoor recreation tourism at present. I believe that almost all former British Empire countries enacted land reform and right-to-roam acts after secession, including Canada and New Zealand. With luck, England will be the last to follow suit behind Scotland and Wales and to adopt clear right-to-roam access legislation.
Voluntary agreement
Voluntary agreements have been in place on several rivers in North Wales. They involve the consent and whim of too many parties on long rivers such as the Dee, for which the agreement of access had a convoluted passage ending in the removal of consent by just a few parties.
Voluntary access agreements have been tried and have failed. However local forums for exchange of information, education and joint environmental action between all he user-groups would be helpful. In particular, it is helpful for canoeists to know where the fishing beats are and where the redds are too. Which species of flora and fauna live in the river and when are their breeding seasons and fragile periods?
Signs and online information can provide this (see the river level signs on the Glaslyn and river information signs all over the Sessia Valleys in Piedmonte, Italy).
Disclosing real time river level data to all river users (such as can be found on the FishingWales website) is a boon. Kayakers will want to use rivers only above certain levels (and advisory can be given by the WCA and others of suggested minimum flows such as the markers on the Glaslyn). Real time water quality indicators could also be given where this information is collected by the EA (eg. on Llyn Padarn where there is an algal bloom problem right now).
Please can you briefly outline what you think are the key issues for recreational access to inland water in Wales and how you would like to see them addressed.
Right to roam.
Education.
Information.
Joint environmental action by all users.
(reasons given in the previous answer)
Peter Wood
