So, how do you make the Lake District 'change and diversify' because it is too heavily weighted toward 'white middle-class able-bodied people'?

[Nanny0gg]

Richard Leafe, the Cumbria park's chief executive, said the Unesco World Heritage site must change to merit continued public funding.

I mean, it's mountains and lakes. What can you do?

And isn't that a tad patronising as well?

I remember showing my ex-sister-in-law around where I used to live. It was in another of the UK's national parks and jaw- droppingly pretty. I remember her looking at the mountains and uttering the immortal line:

'But where's the nearest River Island?'

Conversations continued in this manner for the whole weekend. 'Do you have a McDonald's here though?' 'What supermarkets are nearby, have you got a Morrisons?'

She fully couldn't comprehend how I could live in such a place. So horses for courses.

Good luck with getting her to The Lakes!

Yonks ago i did a social studies module on the OU and one of the first essays was about opening up the Peak District National Park to more diverse visitors from the UK. If I remember I'll look up some of the reports because it was quite interesting.

The Peak District park is actually partially in the wider reaches of the City of Sheffield and some parts of it have good transport links. Some… not so much.

Anyway the point was that if something is funded by the taxpayer then it jolly should well be accessible and open and welcoming to the … well, taxpayer. My Grandad and Uncle used to go rambling on Wednesday afternoon. That started to be a thing at least as far back as the 18th century and maybe before, where factory workers etc would get that afternoon off to go out into the countryside. Well informed and philanthropic factory owners, even back then, recognised the benefits to fresh air and countryside.

Most people could look in their wardrobes and already have suitable clothing for a ramble: trainers are fine, jeans are fine, t-shirt, jumper/sweatshirt and some kind of jacket is fine (more or less layers according to weather/season). That's all it takes to get less well off and more racially/culturally/class diverse people out into the national parks (which belong to all of us).

Accessibility needs to be looked at. I'm not sure that too many wheelchair users want to get to the top of Scarfell Pike (sp?) but i haven't asked any so I'd have to check. But Snowdon has the little train, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that something like that could be applied in other areas. It could be something as easy as a cafe with a good car park in a location with a good view, and accessible toilets etc so that people can go out on a drive, get out of the car and enjoy the view of the lakes/hills/trees/rain.

So firstly I'd think that some of that lovely taxpayers money is used to conduct surveys of what people who go to the LD like about it, what they don't like about it etc. And ask people belonging to underrepresented groups what might encourage them to give it a try.

PP already mentioned working in areas applying for grants/funds etc where they have to consider these points already, so expanding it can't be that difficult.

Because the alternative for me would be to make it much more expensive and cut public funding and invest it in places that are encouraging diversity and access but could do with more cash for that. Then everyone moaning about the excessive PCness of things like this can visit the LD and other parks free of pesky people who just want to have a bit of what the rest of us take for granted.

@EntropyRising so you don't think they should be trying to encourage more disabled people to visit the Lake District?

This is not a representative summary of what he said, why are you mischaracterising it?

Sure, I absolutely would like to see disabled access within reason, as you'll know all disabled access has to be balanced against the integrity of what's being modified which is particularly relevant when where physically demanding attractions are concerned. I've been to the Lake District with my dad who is an old smoker and there's no degree of modification that would make it a desirable or even viable destination for him.

Because I am trapped in a soft play centre this morning I’ve just had a read through the Brecon Beacons Strategic Equality Plan and actually unless I missed it it doesn’t actually seem to deal with specifically increasing the ethnic diversity of their visitors at all. Lots of the usual stuff about commitment to Equality and Diversity in their own organisation through training and recruitment, good stuff about accessibility, and then a fairly short strategic plan with some nice outreach and partnership details within the local community (older people, schools, training opportunities). All sensible stuff, but it certainly doesn’t seem to reflect any sort of broader concern of the Richard Leafe variety that the Brecon Beacons is racist and that this must somehow be corrected.

We need to have cheaper, better national public transport to open up access to all our national parks and other areas of high natural capital value. The fact that it takes hugely longer and costs hugely more for a family of four to get the train and bus to these locations than to drive is a major barrier to access.

@EntropyRising

He said he wanted to encourage a wider range of people with lower motility to visit, after they'd replaced a destroyed path with a tarmac surface. A path which is already along the miles-without-stiles route and is not driving an asphalt battering ram through unspoilt upland fells.

You said his statement was do-gooding which he should take elsewhere.

So either you think replacing one path with tarmac and making it more accessible is a positive thing to do, or you think it's "do-gooding" and a bad thing which has no place in the Lake District.

Which is it?

Because I am trapped in a soft play centre this morning I’ve just had a read through the Brecon Beacons Strategic Equality Plan and actually unless I missed it it doesn’t actually seem to deal with specifically increasing the ethnic diversity of their visitors at all.

I had a hunch this might be the case, but as luck would have it, I am not trapped in a soft play centre this morning so I thought better of reading it.

Jillyhilly

Because I am trapped in a soft play centre this morning I’ve just had a read through the Brecon Beacons Strategic Equality Plan
What a brilliant opening line!

I reckon it's back the same old problem: the funders all have this poncey people on their board/non executives etc calling for diversity this, inclusion that. They then stipulate to anyone coming to them for funds that they have to have this iniative, that increase in visitors, tick, tick tick all those boxes.

So the world is running around filling in all these bids for funds having to dream up all these completely ridiculous "initiatives" otherwise if they didn't, they wouldn't get the £££.

He said he wanted to encourage a wider range of people with lower motility to visit, after they'd replaced a destroyed path with a tarmac surface.

This is of course not true. He specifically mentioned people of different backgrounds. Why do you want to ignore this? If you want to edit what he said, then I'm afraid we cannot agree on much.

So the world is running around filling in all these bids for funds

Well yes... I’m sure that’s what all this is. And maybe it does push people to come up with new ideas, which is good but having written this kind of stuff myself a lot of it is very standard stuff. Also in this document is the following:

The Well-being of Future Generations Act. “The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 (The Act) puts in place 7 Goals and a ‘sustainable development principle’, five ways of working needed for Public Bodies to achieve the well-being goals. Public bodies including are required to take this into account when making decisions. BBNPA is committed to all the Goals including A More Equal Wales : A society that enables people to fulfil their potential no matter what their background or circumstances (including their socio economic background and circumstances).

I can’t quite bring myself to plough through the Trossachs one, sorry to disappoint

The Lake District is transphobic.

And Wordsworth was a TERF.

One organisation is trying to help www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-50939093

The Lake District is transphobic

I reckon the Brecon Beacons are too RevIMJolly. Absolutely no mention of extra tea-cakes for non-binary people in their Strategic Equality Plan.

Do the Marks and Sparkses in Kendal and Penrith allow men into their women's changing rooms?

I would probably reroute some of the money that goes to the national parks to local initiatives to encourage walking with some sort of bridging funding for about five years so the national parks can find other tourism funding streams, such as low cost hostels now the YHA is so expensive. No one is going to spend hard earned money on a long weekend hiking in the lakes or anywhere else on the off chance they will like it. The increase in tourism would hopefully off set the cost a reduction in funding.
Also because trains and buses are privately funded outside of London there is no incentive for them to have joined up timetables this needs addressing.
I have yet to find any uk city that does not have interesting walking routes or parks, which you can access by a short walk or bus ride.
Creating walking groups and education in use of OS maps and provision of them to people as well as other free routes on forestry land, urban and industrial renewal sites. From my home I can walk out the door and walk for miles and miles in the countryside but that is due to my location however the nearest city has buses every 20 mins though where I live and in several village there is a train station back with trains every 30 mins, buses are hourly.
There is in that city 2 forestry parks on the outskirts that I am aware of with walking routes as well as two amazing cycle and walking routes to other towns/villages, if they stay on the bus through my area they can use a coastal walk/cycle route or a urban renewal park on an old pit site.
But people need to be aware, encouraged and educated in these to feel confident to go, like I was and if they enjoy it they might go walking for a few days in the lakes or more likely they will avoid the lakes like the plague and they start to realise the beauty on their door step or close at hand. I actually do go walking in cities as well as the country because they are amazing, beautiful and interesting, even the less well off areas

@bionicnemonic

You forgot the Nando’s.

What Leafe actually said, according to the Times anyway:

”We are deficient in terms of young people; we are deficient in terms of black and minority-ethnic communities and we are not particularly well visited by those who are less able in terms of their mobility,” he said.

“Our challenge is to see what we can do to reverse that, to encourage people from broader backgrounds and a wider range of personal mobilities into the national park to be able to benefit in the same way as those other groups do.”

The Lake District had 19.4 million visitors last year. Research showed that many tended to be older, able-bodied white people.

Julian Glover, author of the government report released in September, described national parks as an “exclusive, mainly white, mainly middle-class club, with rules only members understand and much too little done to encourage first-time visitors”. Mr Leafe said he shared the concern that the park was too exclusive and that it would have to change this.

“We need to be able to sell the national park to everybody in Britain, all society, and it’s important that it doesn’t just become exclusive to one single-use group,” he said.

“The moment we get into that position I think national parks start to lose their relevance and therefore the very reason for calling it a national park and spending public money.”

Really nothing in there suggesting tarmacing all the mountain paths or driving people from their homes, or calling everyone racists, and really he’s not even saying anything that’s particularly surprising or unusual. But never mind, let’s all continue with having a jolly good rant about Political Correctness Gone Mad.

We are deficient in terms of young people; we are deficient in terms of black and minority-ethnic communities

What does that even mean? Deficient? It's such an absolute load of meaningless tripe.

The mountains and lakes are there and free for everyone to enjoy. If they want to and can get there.

These are long fought rights (I know it’s a different area but look up the Kinder Trespass). Walking has been a working class past time for a long time. The Ramblers do some sterling work promoting right to roam.

I think the problem is the extortionate cost of public transport - try getting a family of 4 from Manchester to Windermere for the day (c£100 on the train). The unreliability if Northern Rail - there were no weekend trains from Manchester to the Peak District for 18 months.

I think more could be done to make some of the lower areas more accessible for non able bodied people (Tarn Hows is a nice example of this) but putting a cable car / train on Scafell, Helvellyn, Skiddaw etc just isn’t going to be feasible.

It seems this thread has done as intended and brought out all privileged people who think they are being oppressed. What a show of snobbery, racism and anti-lgtb nonsense.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/14/hiking-walking-younger-generation-ramblers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I used to hike a lot up to the age of 18, with my grandad. Then I moved to the city and work took over. I rediscovered hiking in my early 30s and head for the hills almost every weekend, often with the Ramblers. There are 1000s if Ramblers groups, all over the country. Many do public transport only walks, some are for the less able bodied and many are based in cities.

What I’m trying to get at, is that I don’t think hiking as an activity is discriminatory- it’s actually very democratic as it’s free. The problems are, it’s not cool ( this is changing - see guardian article) and getting to the hills from a city (cost and unreliability of public transport).

Do Marks and Sparkses in Kendal and Penrith allow men into their women's changing rooms?

I think anyone trying to change anywhere in Penrith M&S would be carted off fairly rapidly as it's an M&S foodhall.

I'm trying to remember the layout of it but I think there only ever has been one changing room in the Kendal one, I think it has those lockable cubicles but I might be thinking of somewhere else.

Neither Kendal or Penrith are actually in the Lake District National Park though

@ivykaty44

Found the same list, but it excludes the EU funding for rewilding and peat/bog land "restoration" and other initiatives that have added another £1m pa or more to some of the parks income.

@Devereux1
All of the above is tax payers money. I'm happy to pay for it even though I've only been to 5 of the parks. I don't see why running trial guided buses in conjunction with bus or coach companies and doing some outreach to city communities (of all types) would be such a bad thing. From other peoples comments better local transport would help the indigenous population of the parks reach jobs in local towns and cities, and a whopping tax on holiday homes could help fund it. I know several villages in AONBs and NPs where the proportion of second homes is over 50pc, leaving villages bleak out of holiday season - with falling facilities from schools to medical centres - and loss of casual employment.

I'm not convinced that that many visitors to the Lake District actually go hiking. I've been failing to get numbers, but struggling.

You can get numbers to other Lakes attractions (not mountain hikes all).

Many of the tourist sites get >> 100k visitors each year.

In comparison, Scafell Pike (possibly the busiest summit) gets 100k hikers/yr.

My parents didn't do much walking when we went to Lakes; I humbly submit that a majority of visitors to LD don't want to hike up a mountain.

Having visited a lot of parks in the USA, I think there's a lot that can be done to improve appeal and accessibility. When you arrive at a US national park you get given a big map which shows all the walking trails, the estimated walking times and difficulty, and they are reasonably well sign posted. Other than the shortest / most popular walks, in the UK you either have to be good with an OS map, or take your chances with some written instructions you've found online (if you're a cheapskate like me!) or in a book. I (and I expect many posters here) grew up doing this so I am used to it (and the many times getting lost!). But if you or your family have never done it, then I can see how that would seem off putting.