The Gower Peninsula is situated just west of Swansea in south Wales and is approximately 70 miles in square area. It has five recognised blue flag beaches, and was designated the UK's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1956.
It welcomes thousands of holiday makers yearly due to its numerous camping facilities and various activities, not to mention its unique and unrivalled scenery:
Gower locations:
Ecology:
Gower has four nationally recognised nature reserves and seventeen individual nature reserve sites.
It has twenty seven sites of special scientific interest and over fifty seven hectares of heritage coastline.
A wealth of prehistoric remains including one of the earliest pre Ice-Age human skeletons found in Britain add to its historical significance.
Over one thousand plant species exist in Gower, including Yellow Whitlow Grass - a species not found anywhere else in Britain. Another unique aspect of Gower is its birdlife, which remains more diverse than anywhere else of its size in the UK.
Most recently, Three Cliffs Bay was voted second on ITV's 'Britain's Favourite View', an accolade reserved for only a handful of places around Britain. Opera singer Katherine Jenkins acted on behalf of Three Cliffs, and in an interview in the Sunday Times stated that:
SUNDAY TIMES: KATHERINE JENKINS: Three Cliffs Bay, Gower Peninsula:
“I grew up on the edge of the Gower, but it was still a holiday place for our family. We’d go on weekend breaks to Three Cliffs Bay – six miles down the road! That’s how gorgeous it is... My auntie kept a little caravan on the clifftops, and I spent long summer days there with my dog, digging out boats in the sand and sitting in them, waiting for the tide to come in... “I’m biased, I know, but my view is not just about sentimentality: the bay really is beautiful, with three curious crags of triangular limestone jutting out into the waves, like pyramids. You can walk right underneath them, through a rocky archway to the shore. “There’s a bit of everything: the sea, the cliffs, the salt marshes, a meandering stream curling down to the sea – and Pennard Castle, an 800-year-old fort tucked behind the beach. It’s in picturesque ruins, perfect for mooning about in. Sometimes you even see wild horses cantering along the sands. Talk about romantic. ..... “It may seem a strange thing to say about a beach, but to me Three Cliffs always feels so intimate and cosy. It gives me the feeling of being hugged. I take friends there whenever I’m home, and every time I’m struck by the magic of it again. It still takes my breath away.”
While Gower undoubtedly has a variety of appeals, there is a danger that such unique scenery and ecology is at risk from numerous threats, such as sand dredging, loss of habitat, marine pollution, and myriad development proposals that will are discussed in detail at other sections of the site.
