Mercibucket, I wrote this on another forests thread, but I've copied it here because I agree with you and feel very guilty.
Took my son + 9 friends to a paintball party in Scotland at the weekend.
The woman who runs the centre told me that when they started up they were only allowed one small unobtrusive hut. A couple of years later three more buildings had sprung up. Now they have got permission to build a castle and a Vietcong(?) type area in order to upgrade their facilities. In the middle of a small forest.
It suddenly dawned on me that the selling-off of the forests has been going on for years (it takes me a while to catch on). And it's happening because people like me take their kids paintballing.
I try to make myself feel better about it by classing paintballing along with sports like skiing or golf that also colonise huge areas of our beautiful landscape, and I do sincerely like to see people out in the countryside doing active things rather than sitting in front of their computers or Wiiing in the front room.
But - by building that Paintball Centre, and the large campsite nearby, and the GoKarting place down the road and the Sphere (?) thing that's just starting up, they are wrecking our wildernesses. If the forests really were wild, people could still run round excitedly firing paint at each other, and it would be much scarier and a fraction of the price. The whole thing cost me over £300 (mainly because of all the added extras that you don't realise you are going to have to pay for when you get there, in order to join in).
So who benefits? My son and his friends did this time. But their children and grandchildren won't be so lucky. I can't see that the locals get much out of it. The odd B&B, maybe, but that surely doesn't compensate them for the increased traffic on the roads and the loss of their lovely forest. The real winners are, and always will be, the huge nationwide company that runs these places.
Feel very about it, and won't go again