In reply to Neil Williams:
> Would it? You'd pay a tenner to go to an artificial wall.
It would and I wouldn't. As a student who takes advantage of package deals (buy 10 entries for £x) it's rare I pay over £5 for the wall, but that's somewhat besides the point here. Plus I can appreciate that the wall has costs to run. A layby on road is (well, should be....) covered by taxation and by not being a tw*t my direct environmental impact of going climbing in the pass is negligible, to the point I actually pick up litter left behind by others. Furthermore that £10 spent on parking would then not get put back into local business (i.e. the cafe or Joe Brown), creating employment and keeping the fragile local economy ticking over.
> I don't really support the idea, I'm just saying that if there *was* a desire to control access parking is a better way of doing it than climbing Permits. I don't, equally, think it would be the end of the world. A big advantage, as I said, is that it would not be imposed on less well-off people who would more likely arrive by bus or bicycle or on foot.
Fair enough. I actually think that access dosen't need to be controlled, just those accessing the hill(s) need a better level of basic UK upland edcation re: navigation, litter etc. Yes, the Llanberis Path, Pyg and Miners tracks have become trade routes in the summer, but anyone who is a "serious" walker is unlikley to go up them anyway, and the punters slogging up the voie normals out of breath are generally to tired (from what I've seen) to see the vast numbers as a detriment to their day out.
You say a parking charge wouldn't impact less-well-off people, but I actually disagree here. It's cheaper for me to drive with three friends than for us to get the bus, and carrying a trad rack/boulder mat on a bicycle is a nightmare. Furthermore, without dragging the bike up to, say, the cromlech, where is there aside from Pen-y-Pass (if indeed there is a place there) to lock it?
I would prefer a system where the park-and-ride in Nant Peris is extended to be able to take double then number of cars it can now, for around £3 a day. Then more regular busses (included in the price) to Pen-y-Pass with a couple of request stops en route. Then line to roads with residental parking zones and free parking permits to those in Nant Peris. Incentivise some cafe-building in Nant Peris for everyone to spend money in on the way back down.