MUMBLES: Second car in two months driven along the Gower coast path

Walkers heading out along the Gower coast path on Saturday morning found a brand new Kia jammed across it, nose buried in a wooden bench, cliff on one side and the drop to the sea on the other.

It is the second car on the same clifftop route in two months.

The blue Sportage, on a 26 plate and barely a fortnight old, had got as far as the highest point of the path between Langland and Mumbles lighthouse before it stopped.

Photographs taken by John Phillips and shared in a local Facebook group shortly before 9am show it filling the full width of the concrete, with no way past on either side.

Second car in two months

In July a car with a burst tyre was driven along the same stretch between Limeslade and Rotherslade, with walkers watching it come towards them on the narrow path.

The route was finished last November as the final phase of an £80,000 job paid for out of the council’s highways maintenance budget, the whole point of which was to let families with pushchairs and wheelchair users get along the coast.

Swansea Council said after the July incident that the path had been built for walkers and the emergency services, and that it would look at whether any changes were needed. It did not say when that work would conclude.

On Saturday morning the ward councillor said it would now look at the entrance.

Cllr Will Thomas, who represents Mumbles on Swansea Council and chairs Mumbles Community Council, said he had already been in touch with officers.

“We will look at ways to narrow the entrance. I have emailed officers already,” he said in the Facebook group.

‘I’m surprised a car fits past the bin’

He said there is already a bin and a sign at the entrance, put there to keep vehicles off, and that he had not expected anything to squeeze through the gap.

“I am surprised a car fits past the bin and sign to be honest, as that is why the bin was put there,” he said.

The walker who shared the photographs said the car had travelled a fair distance before coming to a stop, and that a sign at the lighthouse end warns the path is closed, though people are able to clamber past it.

The path runs 1.7km and has been rebuilt in stages as the cliff eroded beneath it, with 310 metres of concrete 1.5 metres wide added last autumn, 450 metres in March and 270 metres back in 2022. It is a walking route, part of the Wales Coast Path around Gower, the first place in the UK to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It is not yet clear how the car got onto the path, whether anyone was hurt, or what damage has been done to the surface, the bench or the handrail.

South Wales Police has been approached for comment.