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Climate change film: Ynysybwl - Clfynydd Cycle Trail

Everyone grumbles about the school run and its effect on local traffic: the pollution, terrible parking and tail-backs. With inadequate public transport and no direct, walkable route, the residents of Cilfynydd and Ynysybwl had little option but to jump in their cars to get to the primary schools in one village and the high school in the other, just a couple of miles apart. That was until Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, suggested a cycle trail to connect the two villages.

Dafydd Thomas is Active Travel Programme Manager for Sustrans Cymru. ‘Sustrans has been building a national cycle network across the UK and this is one of the links that we saw could join in with that. More importantly, this is an opportunity to work with a local community and provide a resource that they want and they need. Sustrans felt that was very important. As you can see it's been very successful.’

Marianne Jones is a founder member and Director of the Ynysybwl Regeneration Partnership. ‘Sustrans heard about the Ynysybwl Regeneration Partnership, I had a telephone call and was asked would we be interested, as a community, in a Sustrans trail going in. We met as a partnership board, made up from the community and decided to take it on board.

‘The local authority was involved because of planning. The Welsh Assembly were involved because of funding. So really it was an all four quadruple sided effort if you like. It was a real whole community project.’

Dafydd explains ‘Once a proposal for a cycle path gets the green light, it's then a complicated process of ‘stitching-up’ pieces of land, trying to get everybody on board, trying to get farmers on board, trying to get landowners on board, and then it's a question of getting the money in and then getting the equipment in and building it. It's quite straightforward from there on in. But in the background there's a lot of negotiation between all the parties involved. So it does take time. But you end up with something that's really worth its weight in gold.’

There’s no doubting the positive impact the trail has had on the village. As Marianne explains ‘It's allowing everyone to get out of the closed environment of the village. It allows them to walk, to see greenery, to feel it and to own it. To make it part of themselves. Children have rediscovered they can play and walk and run without hindrance. It goes from Ynysybwl all the way down to Cilfynydd you can bike, you can walk and we have people on mobility scooters. Ramblers use it, the outdoor pursuit centre, we've even got GPs telling people to walk the Sustrans trail when they've suffered from cardiac problems, stroke problems.’

But the benefits are much wider than this even. ‘It’s had an impact on climate change because it has taken people out of cars. It has taken the carbon emissions down in the village because we’re a very close infrastructure, one road in and one road out. Every car that is off the road in this village is a plus.’

And Dafydd agrees ‘What we really need to do is to maximise the potential, because half of the trips that people do in a car are under five miles; they could walk or cycle. And if they've got something like this then what's stopping them? With 13% of carbon dioxide emissions coming from transport, if people choose to walk and cycle we can make a big impact and do something about climate change.

‘I think it's been successful because of the community involvement,' adds Marianne. 'They wanted it, they have taken ownership of it and they are using it. That is the success of the trail. That is why we want it and we want it to go further, we want the next portion done as quickly as possibly, which will lead all the way up to the Old Bull pub. So everyone will have a drinking hole to stop at!’

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