Yesterday evening, the British Mountaineering Council launched a crowfunding campaign with the aim of purchasing Sirhowy Crag. As of this morning, it has almost reached its £8,000 fundraising goal, with UKC/Rockfax's donation taking the BMC to within £600 of the target. 

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It's already well over the £8k target!  As a punter, my thanks to everyone who's donated (including Rockfax!), and to the BMC volunteers for getting the process started.  Good luck for seeing it through!

Hi,

Fully supportive of buying and will be putting some money in when I get home tonight.

But arn't we in danger of talking the price up by advertising how easy it is to raise the money?

What land is included in the sale? Is it just the cliff or some of the nature reserve? Is the carpark included? etc.

Can't they just use a month of the CEOs salary for it? 

I can't be the only one thinking they could just ask for the bike back...?

Eben here - Policy and Campaigns Officer for Wales on the access team. I've been heavily involved in the planning for this alongside the Land and Property Group volunteers and my colleague Tom Carrick (Access officer).

Questions around driving the price up are very fair and something we have considered long and hard - we were aiming for a guide price that they suggested to us and have made it clear that a higher total on the fundraiser (it has been more successful than we had expected even in our wildest dreams) doesn't mean that we are necessarily going to offer above their guide price. At the same time we don't want to let a great opportunity slip through our fingers. The scenario is that this is valuable to us, and really not valuable to them other then selling to us. It is a source of potential liability and there is a reason that they are selling this (and that they sold Tirpentwys recently after several attempts at auction), and it's not because of the interest of climbers.

Currently we are asking them not to put the crag up for auction - they had previously suggested they weren't going to do so but are now suggesting they may. Avoiding the auction scenario is a win for us and a win for them - they avoid the fees and potential sale for less than the guide price given, and we get certainty, and the avoidance of a bidding war (although it's not clear who, if anybody would be our competitors here).

I can't answer the question as to the exact boundary - Tom has been leading on that side of things and he is on leave for a couple days now although he'll be happy to elaborate.

We are being careful to avoid creating perverse incentives for landowners here however I do think that all things considered, the risk of creating a situation by which landowners cotton on to our interest and start shutting places off and putting them on the market in hopes if another crowdfunder is quite low although not zero.

Thanks everyone for your interest, support, and questions! It has been an incredibly overwhelming couple of days getting this off the ground and I'm blown away by all the comments and donations flowing in. I love climbers. Hope that somewhat answers questions not relating to bicycles and departed CEOs.  

I've heard that the Provisional BMC, the Real BMC and the MCofB (Marxist-Leninist) are all potentially interested. ;⁠-⁠)

Good luck. After making the crap joke I feel morally obligated to chip in a tenner now, despite not actually knowing where the crag is! :⁠-⁠)

Wattsville! It's lovely and best visited between the months of March and October, gets morning shade!  

Zeitgeist E2 is the lone trad route there but is very worth it! 

Can you add a day out with Eben as a stretch goal?

Well done to all concerned. Aside from slight concern about setting a precedent for other landowners to cash in on climbers, in this instance it seems a win, win for all concerned.

What about the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Sirhowy? And the Sirhowy Peoples Liberation Front. Notwithstanding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Sirhowy

Well done BMC. Can we get some publicity on 'The Land and Property Trust' internal BMC charity, including information on how to donate, so that we can strengthen our ability to buy future crags, where access may be at risk and to maintain the crags the BMC own. It's clear many BMC members (and non members, and outdoor related organisations) are interested in supportimg purchases in such situations, and as such I'm sure many more will donate if the charity becomes more visible.

With apologies for the hijack, what happened with the Kilnsey sale, I don't remember reading about it coming to any conclusion.

Hey - yes, I just spoke to my colleague Jon. He will have updated the areas but I totally get that there is broader interest in this.

Jon says: "The situation is that the BMC put in a bid with support from a 3rd party but we’re not successful. The sales process is still underway with the successful bidder. The expected new owner has indicated they are satisfied with the status quo regards climbing and we don’t envisaged any change for climbers. So, a fairly positive outcome for all concerned.

We had hoped to attract 3rd party support for the Sirhowy campaign, but frankly it seems like we don't need it, and can keep our powder dry for the next thing. It seemed a fairly sound strategy to try show the strength of feeling around this type of work (which we as a team hoped and believed would be there) to any brands or business that would consider supporting this in future and I think it's fair to say the campaign has exceeded all expectations. If I was a business, I'd be chomping at the bit for piece of this enthusiasm and energy that's been shown. We are also still waiting on a couple of grant applications that I put in.

We just broke £14,000!

That's 515 supporters and an average donation of £27. Thanks to everyone who donated or left a comment of support - and now to get the job done.

Also huge credit and thanks to UKC - great to see a climbing brand/business/organisation back the community and stump up some cash for this. Currently they made second largest single donation.

Hi there - this is something we're working on right now. In the past LPT has been a bit under the radar but we're in the process of renewing the articles etc (current version predates companies act 2006) then we hope to register with HMRC for gift aid status and make it easier for folk to donate. Cheers, Neal (BMC Director for Wales/access and representative on the LPT trustees).

Thanks for posting this Neal. I'm aware of the BMC work but think it's important to be public and for the Trust to be advertised better (my preference would be a simple independent website cross-referenced both ways with the BMC, as they are legally seperate organisations with strongly overlapping aims....advertising of the Access and Conservation Trust could be improved in the same way). Several have suggested an option to donate to one or more BMC related trusts ( the third being Mountain Heritage Trust) on nembership forms or renewals, if that is practical.

yep, those are definitely things we're looking at, in the short run a dedicated LPT page on the BMC website with donate button, and yes an option to add donations on membership renewals.

Great news

Hi, I wanted to know if there was an update so I ended up reading the thread here but I can't work out if your post is a BMC update or not. 

I get the impression from your post somebody else has now bought Sirhowy but it isn't very clear? 

What will happen with the crowd funding money if this is the case?

This was in response to the sale of Kilnsey earlier in the year.

The crowdfunding page says money will be refunded if the bid is unsuccessful. But as Wil already pointed out, the post you were replying to is about Kilnsey anyway, so I don't think there are any more updates on Sirhowy yet. They're still fundraising.