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Is the Lake District becoming a theme park?

Whinlatter Forest is home to segways – and soon, perhaps, a cable car - This content is subject to copyright.
Whinlatter Forest is home to segways – and soon, perhaps, a cable car - This content is subject to copyright.

A gondola cable-car in the Lake District? Whatever next? An ice hotel on Helvellyn? A Beatrix Potter rollercoaster in Hawkshead?

I’m laying my cards on the table; I love the Lake District. I was brought up there on wet caravanning holidays, and have name-checked most of its fells. I have seen it in all its wonder and (drenching) wetness. I have raged at the traffic jams (to which, of course, my family contributed), despaired at the litter-strewn mountain paths (to my teenage chagrin, my Dad used to pick up the litter and put in his antediluvian rucksack) and seethed at the selfie-stick hordes swarming around Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top home.

Helvellyn - Credit: GETTY
Helvellyn Credit: GETTY

But... I have also got a thrill out of chugging on the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway or finding my favourite characters in the World of Beatrix Potter attraction. I have queued for gingerbread (getting high on the aroma) from Grasmere’s eponymous bakery and enjoyed numerous drinks in numerous noisy inns. So, I’m as responsible as any of the other 19 million-plus annual visitors who make the Lakes the UK’s most popular National Park.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that popularity is due to last year’s World Heritage Status listing; the area already outstripped other Parks with over 16 million visitors in 2014. The fact is the Lake District is blessed with outrageous good looks, comely villages and a natural outdoor adventure playground. A lot of people, understandably, want to enjoy it. And we have to work out how to manage that enjoyment.

16 photos that prove the Lake District is the most beautiful place in Britain
16 photos that prove the Lake District is the most beautiful place in Britain

The gondola cable-car is part of a proposal - set out in the National Park Authority’s draft Local Plan for the park’s future, and which was open to public consultation during May and June - for expanding the current visitor centre at Whinlatter Forest, near Keswick, into a “mountain centre” (whatever that is) with observatory, viewing stations and possibly accommodation, all of which will increase visitors. The cable-car is a novel way of avoiding traffic congestion, particularly if it’s linked with a shuttle bus from car parks in Keswick.

“It is critical for [that] plan to be forward-thinking and explore the challenges and opportunities that currently exist,” explains Stephen Ratcliffe, Director of Sustainable Development for the Lake District National Park. “I welcome and encourage innovation at this time as it allows us to really think how we want the vision for the Lake District to be achieved. I am particularly excited about alternative sustainable transport modes being put forward as part of the visitor experience.”

Views from Whinlatter Forest - Credit: GETTY
Views from Whinlatter Forest Credit: GETTY

Sounds crazy, and inappropriate - the pylons, the gondolas besmirching the landscape - which it is. But the principle behind it - reducing traffic - is laudable; just a bonkers way to go about it. Of course, I realise the cable-car in itself has enormous ‘tourist’ appeal. But of the theme-park variety.

Is that what we have to accept when an area is so heavily reliant on the tourist industry? At what point does the provision of visitor facilities and attractions change the very essence of what it is that attracts those visitors in the first place?

Wild landscapes are what made the Lakes popular – not expensive tourist attractions - Credit: GETTY
Wild landscapes are what made the Lakes popular – not expensive tourist attractions Credit: GETTY

Demands and expectations change. Caravanners were once happy (ish) to forgo daily bathing, now they expect shower blocks and hook-up electricity. To enjoy the Lake District’s peerless watery vistas, people were once happy to walk to a view point, with a picnic; now they want a neat car park, preferably with picnic tables and an ice cream van.

Visitors to Honister Slate Mine, at the head of Borrowdale, were once happy to potter amongst its discarded slate stacks, looking for a nice piece for their garden or house (my Mum did). Now they can have a full underground mine tour as well as an exhilarating - or terrifying, depending on your point of view - ‘via ferrata’ experience, scaling vertical rock faces with the help of fixed cables and ladders. And, yes, it’s on my ‘to do’ list.

So, where do we draw the line between national park and theme park? Earlier this year, plans for a zip-wire across Thirlmere, which lies between Keswick and Grasmere, were abandoned. There was fierce local and environmental opposition, although the main reason was objections by the Ministry of Defence who said it posed a threat to low-flying aircraft.

Would the poet Wordsworth and the redoubtable fell-walker Alfred Wainwright - who both, in their different ways, attract millions of visitors to the Lakes - be horrified at what the area has become with its gift shops, purpose-built fellside tracks and eponymously named pubs and hotels?

Who needs the Grand Canyon? Britain's answers to the wonders of the world
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To my mind, the Lake District doesn’t need more attractions and ‘things to do’; it has enough already. Yes, they will need updating to cope with increasing visitor numbers and expectations - and I don’t envy the planners wrestling with the traffic conundrums - but they must retain their sense of place and identity. Which, in case it’s forgotten, is the Lake District, and not Alton Towers or Blackpool.