Gower AONB Centre

I leave Oxwich Marsh after an early morning’s bird watching as the stream of traffic heads for the car park. It’s not yet 9 am, but the road is already busy with cars, many towing boats, campervans and the like.

In good years up to a quarter of a million people use the car park. From 1973, and for about 25 years, the Nature Conservancy, and then the Countryside Council for Wales, operated a visitor and education centre in the car park. Parties of local schoolchildren used the centre and the marsh to learn about nature. Expertly taught by a resident teacher, this wonderful experience is now a thing of the past. The lease could not be renewed, the building was demolished, and there’s now no trace of the centre. There are still school nature trips, but apart from The Gower Heritage Centre at Parkmill, which is a commercial operation, there is no centre on Gower dedicated to learning about the natural world. 

More remarkable is the fact that there is no official AONB Centre on Gower. There is some tourist and wildlife information offered by The National Trust at Worm’s Head, and there are the usual leaflets at other points here and there. Tourism is booming on Gower, particularly in summer, and visitor numbers increase every year. Surely it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility for the various bodies such as The National Trust, Natural Resources Wales, The Wildlife Trust and Swansea City Council, which between them hold large areas of land, to collaborate and provide a Gower AONB Centre. Other AONB’s have them, why not here?