New Footpath For Coastal Beauty Spot
A project to restore public access across a coastal beauty spot on the shores of north Gower has commenced with the aim of restoring access in 2017.
The restored footpath will once again provide access to people around the coastline and across Cwm Ivy marsh, after a section of the seawall and supporting embankment collapsed in 2014.
Storms damaged the seawall, causing a breach and the sea has now gradually begun to reclaim the marsh, as the breach in the seawall has continued to expand.
National Trust, City and Council of Swansea, Natural Resources Wales, The Ramblers, The Gower Society and local campaign group Save our Seawall Footpath are working together to look at ways to restore access across the marsh.
Part of the project also includes work by Natural Resources Wales and the National Trust to create a new saltmarsh that will provide compensatory habitat for future flood defences within the Carmarthen Bay Special Area of Conservation and create a new habitat for wildlife.
At a meeting in July the group agreed to pursue a solution that involves making the existing breach in the seawall wider and constructing a crossing over the breach. This will provide the right conditions for both the saltmarsh habitat to form and for a safe and sustainable footpath for the public.
Neil Wilson, Save Our Seawall Footpath (SOS), said:
“We want people to be able to enjoy the path across Cwm Ivy Seawall as it is a unique part of the award winning Wales Coast Path.
“The damage to part of the seawall is a great loss to the community, but we’ve now agreed a way forward to restore the footpath that we’re all happy with.
“We hope that a new path will be ready by next summer so that the local community and people from across Wales and beyond can visit north Gower and continue to enjoy these stunning views of the Welsh coastline.”
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