I'd like to thank you for your statement today, Deputy Minister. I'm very lucky to live close to some of the most spectacular and celebrated stretches of our country's coastline, one of those being the Pembrokeshire coast. I do represent many more miles, of course, and most of the coastal path is, in fact, in my region, and it stretches from the Llŷn peninsula to Carmarthen bay. There are unique discoveries to be found all along the 870 uninterrupted miles of the Welsh coastline—so I won't be doing a circular walk in a day—from rare wildlife to industrial heritage. And you can see both together, if you know where to look. You will see kestrels, little owls and many other examples of bird life living in what are disused, now, industrial sites, but they're not unused industrial sites if you care to look for those things. So, I think we need to join those two elements together to tell another story that we are able to do.

I think that the Wales Coast Path Walking Festival, ending this week, has been brilliant in celebrating and promoting the coastal path. I think it's also worth reminding ourselves that the Wales coastal path is just seven years old. So, we have moved along pretty quickly within those seven years. And we know that visitors have always headed to our coast for different reasons, whether it was the miners' fortnight at Barry Island, or whether it was dolphin watching in Cardigan bay. But we've created the unbroken path; it's a continuous physical link. The Wales coast path project can, going forward, create more opportunities to link together those different visitor experiences and therefore boost tourism in the years to come. I have to agree with David Melding when he talks about this being high-end tourism, because people who walk the path do it for many different reasons—bird-watching is one reason, photography will be another reason—and there will be sales of cameras and binoculars, backpacks and other things along the way, and those people who sell those goods really do gain from this creation.

So, I hope that you'll continue to support and promote initiatives like the walking festival, which do help to sell the Welsh coast as a destination for more reasons and all seasons, and I think that that's a key message, because people do walk this path in all seasons and for many different reasons. One of the questions that I would like, Deputy Minister, is whether you will join me in thanking the people who keep that path open, from the staff who work—and I've met some of them; I'm sure others have—in all sorts of weathers to the volunteers who also take up opportunities to make sure that we can keep walking this path, and also to recognise—and other people have mentioned it today—the real benefits to people, particularly mental health benefits, from either volunteering in working opportunities to keep that path in good order, or to escape to the countryside just to make them feel good and so that they can escape the pressures of work. I think that that is of critical importance, which is now, I'm glad to say, eventually being recognised.