The Lake District National
Park The Lake District National Park is England’s largest park and includes Scafell Pike - its highest mountain, Wastwater - its deepest lake and thriving communities like Keswick and Bowness-on-Windermere. There are 42,400 permanent residents and a huge amount of activities for visitors on offer, including walking, climbing, cycling, boat cruises and various museums. Current surveys show that at least 15.8 million visitors come to the Lake District each year spending a total of £925 million! Most come to enjoy the scenery, peace and quiet and walking but many others visit specific attractions or take part in an outdoor activity. There is also the Beatrix Potter Museum.
They stay in a
mixture of self-catering and serviced accommodation. The National Park
Authority's current challenge is finding ways of encouraging sustainable
tourism without further damaging the very landscape which visitors come
to enjoy. Indeed public access to the uplands or fells is unrestricted,
and this can pose problems
Lake Windemere attracts over 1 million
visitors on its own each year!
This makes sustainability difficult to achieve
with such large visitor numbers.
Problems in the Lake District and attempts at
management
The limits placed upon development in the Lake
District means that new houses are seldom built.
There has also been a rise in the number of
people from outside of the Lake District buying up property for a second
home they can use to holiday in.
These 2 factors have pushed up house prices in
the Lake District and made it very difficult for local people
(especially those on low wages) to own their own property in the Lake
District. The ownership of second homes (15% of homes in the Lake
district are second homes of holiday lets) has knock on or secondary
problems because holiday homes are unoccupied for most of the year –
this can increase crime and means people are not in the towns and
villages using local services.
This has a bad effect on the community and means
that local services such as schools and shops can be under pressure for
closure. Housing is private, so there is very little local councils can
do apart from build more properties to rent to locals.
89% of visitors come to the Lake District by car, often just for the
day.
In a region where roads are often narrow and winding, and
towns were constructed before the invention of the motor car this can
pose massive problems.
Congestion, traffic jams and parking are major
issues, and people can park on grass verges in desperation, narrowing
the road and making congestion even worse.
These problems can be overcome in 2 ways –
improving the road network and improving public transport.
There is a wide array of environmental
problems associated with tourism in the Lake District.
Aside from common problems with litter, there
exists footpath erosion, lakeside erosion and air pollution.
The increased number of cars damages the air
from car exhausts, and also people park on grass verges, damaging the
ground parked upon.
Footpath erosion occurs because of the sheer
numbers of people using popular routes.
According to the Park Authority, 4 million
people walk an average of 6km each year.
The pressure of these people’s feet damages
plants and soil, making soil erosion possible.
These issues are worst in Honey pot or popular
areas, which also suffer from the stresses of overcrowding, parking
problems and second homes.
MANAGEMENT of the PROBLEMS As
shown above Tourism in the Lake District faces a range of threats and
challenges. These include competing destinations via low cost airlines;
accessibility issues in terms of increasing congestion on the M6 and the
impact of tolling; the need to significantly raise the quality standard
of the tourism offer including the honeypot towns; and a lack of
nationally significant cultural attractions. Tourism is managed in many ways within the Lake
District National Park;
Environmental damage and honeypots
The
Northwest Regional development agency
stated that an “active zoning” approach would help; this would focus
tourists in honeypot areas such as Windemere and Keswick whilst
protecting other areas from high tourist numbers. It also suggested a
Market Towns Initiative, to include a number of the key towns within and
around the Lake District National Park - Ambleside, Windermere, Keswick,
Ulverston, Cockermouth, Millom and Egremont. Proposed schemes include
improving the public realm (space) in both Windermere and Ambleside, and
developing speciality tourism in Keswick.
Footpaths
The Upland Path Landscape Restoration Project
(UPLRP) was a 10 year project (2002 to 2011) which set out to repair the
majority of landscape scars caused by the erosion of fells paths in the
Lake District. They used
Stone Pitching which
involves digging stone into the ground to form good solid footfalls.
This ancient technique is used extensively in the central fells using
stone which is naturally occurring. In February 2004
£914,841 had been spent on this project. Case study
– Whiteless Pike, Buttermere
The two photos are from the same location near Buttermere. The path had
become so deep and loose that a second path had developed alongside.
Soil was being eroded into nearby streams. Management was only needed
for 20m of path along a steep gradient. The solution was to use local
stone to pitch the path. (Source)
Transport initiatives have focussed on public transport, sustainability
and getting people out of their cars.
The Lake District's roads were not designed for car use which is one
reason why that long, long queue is still with us. Statistics tell us
the other. Ninety two percent of visitors drive to the Lake District.
That's 92 percent of an estimated 16 million people a year.
The B4 network for example includes a Cross Lakes Shuttle which links
the lakes of Windermere and Coniston Water and services the honey pot
sites of Hawkshead, Grizedale and Tarn Hows. The Shuttle has an
integrated timetable and through-ticketing and there are cycle racks on
the boats and minibuses that provide the service.
Another sustainable travel option is the ‘Give the
Driver a Break’ scheme which is local authority-led and designed to get
people out of their cars.
In 2012
Government funding of £7 million was secured for a three-year scheme
called 'Drive Less, See More'. It has an ambitious goal: a unified
'boats, bikes, boots and buses' network throughout the national park.
Popular walking routes are being connected to public transport
services. Cycleways
and footpaths are also being brought together. This
initiative wants to cut 11,000 tonnes of carbon emissions and ease
congestion in visitor honeypots of Bowness, Windermere, Ambleside,
Coniston and Grasmere. A bike-friendly bus has also been launched.
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