Outdoor Sport and Recreation

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Anne Main

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said so far. I made a jibe about his being Welsh, but he knows that I started out as a Welsh politician in his very own village of Gowerton, and he knows that my father also suffered from ankylosing spondylitis.

Will my hon. Friend concentrate a little bit of his speech on the importance of getting children into the countryside? He knows that I am the chairman of the John Clare Trust, which has a campaign, Every Child’s Right to the Countryside. In this country, 35% to 40% of kids do not see the countryside at all, and if they do see it, they only see it on a school trip. So please let us do something to get schoolchildren into the countryside.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Interventions should be quite short. They are becoming mini-speeches.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Thank you, Mrs Main.

My hon. Friend is right, and the John Clare Trust and so many other organisations do such good work. When I was an Environment Minister, one of the most inspiring projects that I saw in the national parks was the Mosaic programme, which dealt not only with children but with people from different ethnic backgrounds—people who typically did not go out, and felt that there was some sort of psycho-perceptual barrier that stopped them going out into the countryside—and encouraged them to go out. Then what we saw was the intra-generational effect of children taking their parents and grandparents into the great outdoors.

I am focusing on strolling, but I have enjoyed some of the most adrenaline-filled times in my life outdoors, including hanging by my fingertips from cliffs in north-west Wales, which was scary and exhilarating at the same time. I have broken bones on mountain bike paths; I do not do that anymore, as I am getting on now and have a more sedate approach. I have thrown myself off the cliffs in west Wales and swung from them, while coasteering, which is a tremendous activity. And I have swum in the sea off west Wales, through waters full of jellyfish, bottlenose dolphins and so on, which was absolutely phenomenal.

Such activity is an education as well as being good for people’s health, and it is good for the economy. Locally, we have some amazing initiatives along that line. We have a striders group—the Ogmore Valley Striders. What does it do? It works with existing groups on the ground that bring together older people—third-age people—and it says to them, “Come out. Let’s do some mild walking along the cycle paths that we have. Then maybe one day, we’ll go a bit higher,” and so on. I now see people from those groups sitting in the café halfway up that cycle path, and there will be 20 of them together. They are also spending money in that café, while they have a sit-down and a chat, before they go out and get the health benefits of walking as well.

We also have the Love 2 Walk festival. Labour-run Bridgend county borough council supports it every year, and it is growing every year, with a long list of places for people to go and walk to, ranging from easy walks to very challenging and rigorous walks in the south Wales valleys. Recently, we have had an Elvis walk in Porthcawl, which broke the record for the number of Elvises walking along the all-Wales coastal path—who can say more than that?