This morning, Denbighshire County Council Planning Committee have approved (by 13 votes to 3) plans to build a visitor hub at the start of the main path to Moel Famau in the Clwydian Range & Dee Valley National Landscape (formerly AONB), at the ‘top car park’ at Bwlch Penbarras.

The building will include information displays, an office and base for the Rangers and volunteers, toilets, and a ‘grab & go’ refreshment kiosk, but not a café as some media sources are erroneously reporting – think coffee & flapjack (with optional advice and information) not egg, chips and peas.

It’ll provide a permanent replacement for the Shepherd’s Hut that on some days provides some of those services in a limited and fairly inefficient way, being towed back and to from the National Landscape base at Loggerheads, 3 miles away.

It follows discussions and consultations over the last 6 months or so, and an amendment to the original design to recognise some concerns around visual intrusion from residents of the nearby village of Llanbedr Dyffryn Clwyd, which has seen it reduced by 20% in size and set further back into the hill.

Partly because of some misunderstanding of its purpose, but also because of its location, it’s an application that’s provoked a fair amount of media attention, and a degree of opposition. But there’s also been support from those who recognised the need for the building, in order to manage the 300,000 visitors that the hill receives annually.

As a hill walker, and a lover of our upland heather moorlands, my instinct in the past would probably have been to side with those opposing the intrusion of a man-made structure into an otherwise natural landscape.

Strictly speaking, use of that word ‘natural’ would be incorrect of course, because the hand of man is all over Moel Famau already – from ancient celtic hillforts, and the Victorian memorial tower on the top, to stone walls, and more recent agricultural ‘improvements’ for sheep grazing, and the huge commercial forestry that covers most of the eastern side of the hill.

But what’s really caused a personal U-turn, and for me to be far more supportive than I would ever have been in the past, has been my time as a volunteer with the National Landscape, and the opportunity that gives to interact with visitors, and to understand their needs better.

Contrary to popular myth, they’re not all scousers! They come from anywhere within an hour’s radius (and occasionally much further – New Zealand’s the hard-to-beat record of those I’ve spoken to). My own take is that it’s only really on sunny weekends and school holidays that the majority balance shifts away from local dog walkers, and residents of Wrexham, Deeside and Dyffryn Clwyd towards those from Cheshire and beyond.

But they’re also a wide mix in terms of hillwalking experience, knowledge and understanding. Many will be seasoned, well-equipped types, on a day-off from the mountains of Eryri. But a huge proportion are novices – walking their first real hill, and getting their introductory taste of the outdoors and everything that comes with that, including the weather conditions that can be thrown at you (even on a 554 metre Moel).

Some of the conversations I’ve had with visitors stick in my mind – like the two visibly unfit late-teen lads from inner-city Liverpool, who told me that they had zero experience of the outdoors, and were ‘doing Moel Famau a few times to build up confidence to have a go at Snowdon’. They were ‘blown away’ by the beauty of the place and surprised me by wanting to know not just about the local wildlife but also the meaning of a few of the welsh names. Or the group of fifteen 20-somethings (being led by just 2 who had some previous experience) who’d wrecked their previously pristine white trainers in the mud but were having ‘the best time ever’, and were ‘defo’ going to do some more.

I think those of us who can happily navigate an 8 hour walk over the Carneddau in mist can sometimes look down on Moel Famau as a little pimple of a hill, and forget that it can actually be a bit of challenge for some. But if their experience is good one, it can then act as a gateway for them, and can lead them to  a better appreciation of the outdoors, and an incentive to explore wider and higher.

Inevitably, the volume of visitors can bring its own problems, and a need for some sort of management. The Shepherd’s Hut has proved its worth by helping with issues like keeping dogs on leads around livestock and birds, and littering. But it’s not all about dealing with problems, it’s also about being positive, and giving that added-value to newcomers that adds to people’s experiences  –  the information on the local area, the education on wildlife or on routes and rules, and those snippets of advice on which hills they can head to next and why.

We don’t need that everywhere. But at just one or two ‘gateway’ or ‘honeypot’ sites, which’ll give the most bang-for-buck, then why not?