a) General objections 

• Climbers need to be able to respond to changes in weather conditions. I have often arrived at a crag with a partner only to find that a change in conditions necessitates an early departure from that crag – sometimes to another crag in a different valley and sometimes to the nearest café. 
• As well as the curtailment of activity that would result from the inability to easily switch to another crag, there are serious safety implications attached to the inability to quickly evacuate back to base (or elsewhere) in the event of bad weather or other emergency. 
• Routes may take longer than anticipated to complete. A memorable example of this was the time my partner and I reached the road at 10.30 pm, having been delayed by extremely poor weather and a slight accident. Both of us were very wet, cold and tired; had we not had our own transport, the outcome could have been far less happy. 
• Climbers carry a lot of gear. If conditions improve between leaving base and parking our car, we have the option of leaving in the vehicle items which experience suggests that we no longer need that day. We carry less, we move more quickly, we get less tired. 
• The gear that climbers of necessity carry has the potential to cause huge difficulty and tremendous nuisance on a bus. The thought of a cragful of wet climbers with ropes and sacks trying to all crowd into the same bus is truly awesome – particularly if that same bus is already full of non-climbers who boarded previously. 

b) Implications for me as a climber with a physical disability.

The points I have made above will have been made by many in the climbing community. However, the proposal has additional implications for me as a disabled climber. I have ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic pain condition affecting my spine in particular. I came to climbing some six years ago, in my early forties; although I had wanted to climb all my adult life, it was only then that the a/s (which began when I was aged 14) subsided to a point at which climbing became a feasible proposition. Although a/s does restrict my climbing in many ways, my motivation and an understanding and experienced climbing partner enable me to get out into the mountains and climb (I am also fortunate in that part of the treatment of a/s is strenuous physiotherapy, which rock climbing complements). However, the disability presents issues for me which able-bodied climbers do not normally need to consider. 

• I am a slow walker and walking long distances is often painful, particularly carrying a climbing sack. Crags have to be easily accessible (to me, a mile is a long approach and a more serious proposition than the route itself). 
• As with many chronic conditions, the effects of a/s are volatile. Symptoms can flare up unpredictably. There have been days when a crag-approach that at the start of the day took ten minutes has later taken an hour to reverse because of pain and severe stiffness (caused either by some event of the day or simply by an increase in disease activity). With our own transport, my partner and I need concentrate only on getting off the hill. Without our own transport, it is likely that there would be times when we might be stranded. 
• Spinal fusion is a part of the disease process and my spine is now fused almost solid. For this reason, I am extremely vulnerable to spinal jarring. I find that I am now unable to use buses because of this. My experience of bus travel now is that I am very disabled on completion of my journey, however mobile I was at the start. Even a short bus ride incapacitates me. 

Rock climbing is a physical activity which feeds my soul and in which I can engage within certain constraints despite my disability (over the years I have had to give up other forms of sporting activity – including hill-walking – because of disability). Climbing on mountain crags brings a dimension to climbing which outcrop climbing cannot. If, as a visitor to Snowdonia, I can no longer enjoy free use of my car, I will no longer be able to climb there. Because of increased distance from home and generally longer crag approaches, I will not simply be able to switch to climbing in the Lake District instead; I will be largely restricted to climbing in non-mountain areas. 

Without my own transport, the exclusion will also be geographical: if my only means of transport into the area and within it is to be by bus, I will no longer visit Snowdonia even as a non-climber; because I now find bus travel so painful that it is incapacitating, there will be no point. I love climbing (the secret of the universe as far as I’m concerned!); I love being among the mountains; and I love Snowdonia. I cannot climb there as often as I would like, but when I do, I stay in a local hotel, buy petrol and other necessities in a non-chain garage and in local shops, spend money in local craft shops and cafes. 

I take care when parking that I do not cause any obstruction and I do not object to paying a reasonable fee for parking (sometimes I am supplementing a farming family’s income by doing so). 

Part of the Government’s agenda at present is social inclusion. My great fear about the Green Key Strategy is that the mobility I currently have in terms of car use will be withdrawn (either through a compulsory Park and Ride scheme or through a ‘voluntary’ scheme which marginalises the private motorist). The outcome of this for me would be social exclusion; the outcome for those residents of Snowdonia who currently benefit economically from my climbing trips to the area would be loss of income. 

The economic contribution that members of the mountaineering community make to the area was demonstrated by last year’s foot-and-mouth epidemic. 

Yours, with the sincere hope that I will be able to continue climbing in Snowdonia for many years to come

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