Well the Outdoor Alliance for Wales is not a ?secret society? although it has no public-facing web presence. It?s a highly political arena in which to bring together the stakeholders and leadership of the outdoors community, in the widest sense, and to speak truth about what is right for Wales with one voice to those in power. For example, the OA sent an open letter, signed by many such groups including our regional caving council, to the DM about the path closures programme at the end of March which is reported here:
https://www.ramblers.org.uk/en/news/latest-news/2020/march/outdoor-alliance-wales-paths-and-outdoor-access-closure.aspx
Work is in progress at a frenetic rate now - judging from the number of emails I?ve been getting since Thursday's OA Zoom meeting and the activity posted on its private forum - to produce a roadmap for normalizing the outdoors - not to where we were before Coronavirus, but at least to a much better place than we are all in now, with appropriate checks and balances. I expect there will be another joint letter to the Welsh Government shortly which the BMC will endorse although BMC have already published their statement, i.e the subject of this discussion thread, due to the political exigencies and to beat Boris to the podium. The next two weeks will be quite significant, I feel.
NRW has its own National Access Forum for Wales (NAFW - pronounced naff you) which meets physically for a couple of hours three times a year at different towns across Wales. This is also extremely political and is anything but a genuine forum as NRW controls the agenda, chairs the meeting, there is very little actual discussion, etc. The meeting is generally filled with powerpoint presentations, some of which are essentially ?reporting back? exercises for NRW staff to talk about their own work although other organisations contribute too. For example, I gave a caving presentation there. I've sat through ones from National Trust, Canal & River Trust, YHA, and so on. It ends with free lunch which is when any real discussion takes place, in private obviously.
As to who was in the OA Thursday meeting. I?ve mentioned some already in my earlier posting to which I can add the Ramblers, Open Spaces Society, Pembrokeshire National Park, Sport Wales, Welsh Sports Association. Significant speakers included Paul Donovan (chairing the meeting), Tom Hutton (mountain guiding), Chris Cousins (RNLI), Phil Benbow (Mountain Rescue), Paul Marshall (Canoe Wales), Tom Hutton (OpenMTB), Gerwyn Owen (RYA), Jethro Moore (Adventure Beyond), Chris Pierce (AHOEC). Finally Alison Roberts from NRW was there too, listening but said nothing.
The output of the meeting was a decision to tell the WG how we can support a pathway to recovery. Four subgroups have been formed to report back to OA in a week. These are hillwalking / climbing / caving and the like, MTBs and cycling generally, water activities, and commercial activity providers. I expect there will then be another Zoom meeting to integrate these strands with an agreed joint statement coupled to a ?well thought out across the board? outdoors action plan.
Attending meetings like these and participating actively in sport politics and lobbying is part and parcel of my voluntary job, at least as I see it, as the Access Officer for caving in Wales, and I hope this gives you some insight into what goes on behind the scenes. Talking to landowners and battling with the PDCMG is only a bit of what's involved.
As an aside, it was the biggest Zoom meeting I have ever attended (yet). It was expertly chaired and was highly focused, productive, organised and civilised. Having seen this work so well, I can see no reason whatever for BCA Council ever to meet again physically on a routine basis and the discipline that comes from using this technology would also be conducive to a better behaved, more uniformly positive and efficient BCA Council than the one we are used to.