It’s early days for the Welsh space programme

Coed y Brenin’s all-new visitor centre is beginning to take shape – the timber frame is in place, so you can now see how tall (three stories) and cylindrical it is. It’s located up the hill on the other side of the valley from the existing visitor centre, with views down the valley to the 3,000ft Cadair Idris.

With 87% of visitors to CyB being mountain bikers, it’s unsurprising that the £1.6million centre packs a selection of bike-friendly features – cafe, bike storage, workshop, bike wash, showers and so on. It’s not just for riders, though – there’ll be new walking facilities, picnic sites, a children’s play area and “All Ability” access to the forest park.

Existing MTB trails will be subtly re-routed via the new centre, and there’ll be a much bigger car park plus a nearby overflow car park for particularly busy periods. The building itself is designed to be environmentally friendly and constructed from as many local materials as possible – the timber cladding and window and door frames will use wood from the forest park itself, while recycled materials will be used for insulation and there’ll be a biomass/wood fuel heating system, it says here.

Of course, what you really want to know is what’ll be on the cafe menu, how good the cakes will be and what the volume of the tea mugs is, but unfortunately we don’t know any of those things yet. The new centre is due to open in Spring 2006…