Our Charities
Our Charities
CRiC
With the exception of 2021 (a Covid year), the Crickhowell Walking Festival (CWF) has taken place every year since 2008. It is run by a small team of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers who are able to call on the skills and commitment of over 100 walk leaders and asssistants to guide hikers of all abilities on either short, long or challenging walks in and around the Brecon Beacons. Each year we lead over 80 different walks over a 9 day period in early March and our records show that the festival is increasingly popular with walkers from across the UK.
CWF successfully raises funds for the Crickhowell Resource and Information Centre (CRiC) - a registered charity providing community and business facilities and services. Located in Crickhowell, CRiC is a community hub and visitor information centre with meeting spaces, coffee bar and art gallery. The charity provides essential information about walking routes and other attractions in the area to the many visitors and holidaymakers who come to Crickhowell, a popular holiday destination in South East Wales. (www.visitcrickhowell.wales )CRiC is entirely self-funded by its own endeavours and receives no grants or local authority support. The annual Walking Festival generates vital income to help keep the centre open year-round.
Our Charity this Year
Each year the Walking Festival with CRiC, raises money for a local charity nominated by the CWF committee. This year the nominated charity is Longtown Mountain Rescue.
Longtown Mountain Rescue was formed in 1965, to help people in difficulties within the Black Mountains. Team members are now regularly called to assist in a wide variety of situations, where the police consider their expertise would be of benefit. Mountain Rescue Team is a voluntary organisation which provides Search and Rescue across Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and Worcestershire.
For sixty years, whenever someone has been lost, hurt, frightened or in despair somewhere in the Black Mountains area, a group of ordinary people have dropped everything – dinner half eaten, children half-asleep, work half-done – and walked into the weather to bring a stranger home. They are artists and teachers, doctors and farmers. Nobody pays them. Nobody makes them. They go, because someone has to.