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image captionNorth Wales Police say beauty spots have been disappointingly busy since Christmas
Car parks in Snowdonia s national park are to close following a rise in lockdown rule breakers, park authority bosses have said.
Authority chairman Wyn Ellis Jones, said a high volume of people had been seen ignoring Covid rules in the area since Christmas.
Wales is at alert level four, meaning non-essential travel is banned.
Snowdonia National Park Authority said there had been an increase in examples of people disregarding current Welsh Government guidelines that all of Wales is in lockdown .
The decision was made especially as the new variant of the disease is spreading so quickly , it said.
Nant Cwmbran Isaf farm near Nasareth (post-extension). Handout photo by Alun Lewis, free to use by all LDRS partners. A Gwynedd farmer who was ordered by a national park to tear down an extension he built to house his sick mother is seeking a last minute reprieve with Welsh Government-appointed inspectors. According to Alun Lewis, the work was carried out to help the family care for his elderly mother after she suffered a stroke and was subsequently diagnosed with dementia. But with the Snowdonia National Park Authority having turned down his bid to retain the recently built two storey side extension at Nant Cwmbran Isaf farm near Nasareth, Mr Lewis is now seeking a last minute reprieve with the Planning Inspectorate to stop it being demolished.
On Thursday (7 January), the Snowdonia National Park Authority in north Wales decided to close all its car parks to block visitors from breaking Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. People in Wales have been instructed to stay at home and unnecessary travel has been banned under alert level four restrictions, which have been in place since 20 December and were renewed today for three further weeks. Nevertheless, a “high volume of people” have been found ignoring the rules, according to the authority’s chair Wyn Ellis Jones. The national park has seen a rise in visitors to its beauty spots since Christmas, North Wales Police officers have “stopped and turned away” several hikers wanting to climb Snowdon (some who had travelled from London and Milton Keynes in south-east England), and staff manning the car parks have even reported “abuse” in the past week from members of the public.