A year on from the London 2012 Olympic Games, local people are being invited to get involved in mountaineering to celebrate the legacy investment given to Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club.
After securing £50,000 of Olympic legacy funding from Sport England’s Inspired Facilities Fund in 2012, the Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club (GMC) has completed extensive improvements to its hostel-style accommodation for mountaineering in Deiniolen, Snowdonia.
The facility provides local mountaineers with low cost accommodation in one of the key areas for the sport in the UK. The club has owned the facility – two former quarrymen’s cottages – for fifty years, and previously all improvements had been funded by the club and mainly carried out by members in their spare time.
The living and dining area has been extended into a former bunkroom, so that everyone now has somewhere to sit in the evenings, and the building has been extended to create two new bunkrooms to maintain the same number of beds (24). The drying facilities for wet clothes and outdoor equipment have also been improved – a key requirement given the changeable mountain weather.
These changes make the facility suitable for groups which introduce young people to outdoor pursuits by providing separate male/female bedrooms and a large communal room for group activities. Several youth organisations in the county have expressed interest in using the facility, and other mountaineering clubs and walking groups who use the hut have also welcomed the changes.
Club Chairman Dave Pillow said: “We’re delighted that this investment has enabled us to upgrade our accommodation so it’s more attractive to current and new participants to the sport and suitable for use by youth groups. We now have an outstanding facility as our 2012 Olympics legacy which will benefit our members, other UK mountaineering clubs and young people across Gloucestershire, and we hope it will encourage more people to take up mountaineering and other outdoor activities. We really want to thank Sport England and the National Lottery for the investment that has made these improvements possible.”
Meet the Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club
To celebrate the club’s part in the legacy of the Games, local people are encouraged to come to one of its pub meets held at the bar of the Warehouse Climbing Centre in Gloucester on the first Tuesday of each month at 9pm to find out more about its programme of activities.
The rock climbers in the club also meet most Tuesday evenings from 7pm onwards at The Warehouse Climbing Centre in Gloucester. Please feel free to come along and have a chat.
The club has more than 120 members across the county and organises regular weekend meets in Snowdonia, other areas of the UK and overseas, as well as evening climbing, day walks and other activities. For more information visit the club website or contact the membership secretary
Inspired Facilities funding extended
Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club is one of well over 300 projects across England receiving lottery investment from the fourth round of the Inspired Facilities fund and one of more than 1,300 to benefit overall. Earlier this week two more BMC affiliated clubs announced that they had successfully applied for funding
Many more communities are now set to benefit from the hugely popular fund, after Sport England announced that it was extending Inspired Facilities until 2017, with an additional £40 million of National Lottery funding to invest. Bids will be accepted for the next round of funding from 21 October 2013. You can find out more at the dedicated Inspired Facilities website
Sport England’s Chair, Nick Bitel, said: “A year on from the Olympics, this National Lottery investment is helping us deliver a lasting sporting legacy. With investment now on offer from our Inspired Facilities Fund until 2017, we look forward to supporting many more sports clubs who play such a vital role in grassroots sport.”
Find a club near you
There are around 300 climbing, hill walking and mountaineering clubs in England and Wales which are affiliated to the BMC, and there are two easy ways to find clubs near to you
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