Eryri Overnight Parking Ban Scrapped After Ten Weeks

Eryri is the national park most people still call Snowdonia. It covers a big chunk of North Wales, it's home to Yr Wyddfa — the highest mountain in Wales — and about four million people visit it every year. On the 1st of April, the park authority banned overnight parking at eleven of its car parks. Ten weeks later, they've reversed it at nine of them.

I'll be honest, I've never parked up in any of these car parks. I follow stories like this for the same reason most van owners do: to work out where I can actually stop, and to keep an eye on which way the wind is blowing for van life generally. And right now the wind changes direction depending on which council you're stood in front of.

What the ban actually was

From April 1st, nobody could be parked in eleven Eryri car parks between 10pm and 3am. Not just campervans. Anybody. The two car parks down at Bala — Llyn Tegid and Llangywer — got hit harder, 10pm to 6am.

The reasons given were litter, waste, anti-social behaviour, and informal camping taking trade off the proper campsites nearby. And this is where I have a problem with how these decisions get made, because it's the same stereotype every time. There are vans parked up, there's a mess, so it must be the vans. Case closed, signs ordered.

It's the few spoiling it for the many, and it genuinely winds me up — because the people emptying their waste in a hedge aren't reading council consultations, and they won't read this either. The rest of us, the ones who pay the parking fee and take our rubbish home, are the ones who end up banned.

Except this time the ban didn't just catch van owners. Eryri is sunrise-walk country. People park ordinary cars at 2am to be on top of Yr Wyddfa for first light. Hiking guides start clients in the dark. Stargazers turn up because it's one of the best dark sky areas in Britain. A blanket overnight ban swept all of them up too, and that's probably what killed it.

Why they backed down

The locals turned on it. That's the short version.

Residents in the villages around the park worked out fairly quickly what every van owner could have told them on day one: you don't make a parked van vanish by banning it from a car park. You move it. Onto the lay-by, onto the street, under someone's bedroom window. The communities said exactly that, the businesses and walkers piled in behind them, and at the meeting on the 10th of June the authority pulled the ban at nine of the eleven sites.

The two Bala car parks are a different story, and fair enough. The local councils there had raised genuine, repeated problems with overnight camping. The plan now is a much narrower trial closure — something like 1am to 3am, with fines for anyone caught in there during that window. Whatever you think of it, at least it's aimed at the actual problem rather than everyone who owns a vehicle.

Scarborough did the opposite

Here's what makes Eryri's U-turn interesting rather than just a local story.

North Yorkshire Council ran an 18-month trial banning overnight motorhome parking at Scarborough's North Bay and on the A174 near Sandsend. In March, they made it permanent. And in their own announcement, they admitted the trial had pushed motorhomes into residential streets in Scarborough — and said they'd now consider similar restrictions in those streets as well.

So the ban moved the problem, and the fix for the moved problem is another ban, which will move it again. Two authorities looked at the same evidence in the same spring. One reversed course in ten weeks. The other decided the answer was more of the same.

The bit that actually matters to van owners

I've never been moved on. But anyone who spends weekends in a van knows the feeling I'm on about — wanting nothing more than a lie-in and a slow morning, and instead lying there half-awake wondering if you're annoying someone, whether there's a sign you missed, whether there'll be a knock on the side of the van. That low-level stress is the real cost of all this. Not the fines. The fact you can never fully relax.

Every blanket ban adds to it, and every U-turn like Eryri's takes a little of it away. Councils watch each other. Cornwall is consulting on overnight bans across its car parks right now, and they'll have seen a national park try the blanket approach, get a kicking from its own residents, and abandon it inside a season.

The campaign group CAMpRA has been banging the same drum for years: the answer is aires, the European-style designated stopping places with water and waste disposal that France has by the hundred. Their survey of nearly 7,000 motorhome and campervan owners found 88% are unhappy with overnight parking availability in the UK. That's a lot of people with money to spend being told to clear off.

So if you're heading to Eryri this summer, the car parks are back. Pay the fee, take your rubbish home, and don't be one of the few. There are plenty of councils still looking for an excuse.

FAQs

Where is Eryri and why was there a parking ban?

Eryri, formerly known as Snowdonia, is a national park in North Wales and home to Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon). The park authority banned overnight parking at 11 of its car parks from 1 April 2026, citing litter, waste and anti-social behaviour linked to informal camping.

Which Eryri car parks are still restricted overnight?

The two car parks at Bala — Llyn Tegid and Llangywer — are in line for a narrower trial closure of around 1am to 3am with penalty fines, after repeated concerns from the local town and community councils. The other nine sites have reopened overnight.

Does the U-turn mean I can camp overnight in Eryri car parks?

No. Overnight parking and camping are different things. Informal camping — awnings out, waste left behind — is what triggered the ban in the first place, and it's still the fastest way to get these car parks closed again.

Is Scarborough's motorhome parking ban also being lifted?

No. North Yorkshire Council made its overnight motorhome ban at Scarborough's North Bay and near Sandsend permanent in March 2026, despite acknowledging the trial displaced motorhomes into residential streets.