A few months ago, I was invited to a meeting of the Cambrian Routes and Paths Society. If you’ve not heard of them before, their aim to to increase awareness and therefor use of the often underused tracks and paths that exist within the Cambrian mountains. Anyway, the reason I’d been invited to this particular meeting was to discuss ideas for raising the profile of the Trans Cambrian Way, which was after all, the first of what we could perhaps term, “long distance bikepacking’ routes in the UK, yet a route which has perhaps become somewhat overshadowed in recent years.
Numerous ideas were debated over the course of the afternoon some of which appeared to float, then it was a (never) simple matter of firming things up and putting those ideas into motion. Well, I’m very happy to report that I received a press release over the weekend, which I thought I’d share with you as it seems to be good news for the two wheel traveller …
The Cambrian Routes and Paths society is pleased to announce that all relevant permissions have now been granted for the installation of public toilets along the entire length of the TCW cycle route. Phase one will hopefully see three toilets installed between Rhayader and the Hafren forest section – we felt this was perhaps the most deserving area to address initially given the general remoteness of the route hereabouts and also the reputation of the curry house in Rhayader high street.
As with so many organisations, funding is always limited, so to prevent any undue delays, we’ve partnered with Potters Recycling in Newtown and they’ve agreed that we can have the pick of all the toilets brought into them by the general public. Not only will that allow our small budget to stretch a little further but we feel it also adds to the green credentials of the project as a whole.
Each installation will be of a composting type. Our research would suggest that this type of arrangement performs much better when only organic material is deposited. With that in mind, we aim to encourage visitors to use only natural materials with which to wipe. Obviously no one can be expected to carry such things with them, so all proposed sites will be within easy reach of bracken, leaves or long grass, etc.
Shovlin Groundworks of Kerry have been contracted to excavate the series of four metre pits and their spokesman Ifor Barrow said, “we’re very excited to be involved in such an innovative scheme and we’re hoping this initial push will lead to bigger jobs in the future”.
The first phase is expected to be fully operational by the end of May and details of the location of each installation will be available on the crap website.
Yours on behalf of the Cambrian Routes and Paths society,
Bob Wildun.
