The media loves bad news. Stories of failure, funding cuts and violence fill the airwaves, screens and newspapers, and in the Peak District it’s not been a great few weeks.
I grew up just south of the Peak District National Park and have spent much of my life enjoying the fresh air and freedoms it brings. COVID was an awful time for us all, and its effects seem to be more far reaching than I even imagined. I hoped that once we were allowed our freedoms again, that the old world I once knew would return, but how wrong I was.
The Stepping Stones at Dovedale have been a tourist destination since the Victorian Era. They were laid around 1890, and I vividly remember an Ice Cream Van there as child. It’s a well known hot spot of tourists now, but thats no excuse for fighting. The recent brawl which has been widely reported on the internet is disgraceful to put it mildly.
Fire is a huge risk, particularly on open moorland. Large signs are openly displayed all over the Peaks, but this still does not stop people being either ignorant or stupid. Recently a Gamekeeper caught a group of men, openly lighting a BBQ, on open moorland, next to a sign stating ‘No Fires’. What makes this image worse, is that they have a petrol can with them..! Now, it could be full of water, but I would hope your assumption is the same as mine. Thankfully they were stopped, reported to the police and a disaster was averted. My thanks to the Peak District Moorland Group for allowing me to use this image.
Recently I was Fly Fishing on Ladybower Reservoir. It wasn’t a day to catch anything, but still an enjoyable few hours. I noticed large numbers of folk out walking and enjoying the beautiful weather. When I returned the boat and signed out, I got chatting to one of the rangers. Fires have been seen all round the lake over the past few months and he has a novel way of dealing with them. He takes out a boat, armed with a bucket. He lands as close to the BBQ as he can, fills the bucket out of the reservoir, dumps it unceremoniously on the BBQ and walks off. Confrontational perhaps, but effective. The Rangers have also cleaned up immense amounts of camping material, which has been dumped in the woods. The Snake Woodland, just up the valley has suffered a similar fate and volunteers have spent weekends, clearing up after others. The Peak District has a Fire Operations Group, which ‘brings together a partnership of six fire services, National Park rangers, National Trust wardens, water companies, major landowners and gamekeepers to draw up fire plans, oversee specialist fire-fighting equipment, raise awareness of moorland fires and the consequences and train for emergencies’.
Of course, the destruction is not just a Peak District problem. Recently a group of friends ‘wild camped’ (and I do use that phrase very loosely) in Buttermere and made a youtube video of themselves taking axes to trees, lighting fires and causing such a mess that it took the park rangers two days to clear up. The video has been made private (unsurprisingly), but if you saw it, I hope you were appalled.
And it’s not just fires. I’ve wild camped for years and always adhered to the seven principles of “Leave No Trace‘. One of the principles is to “Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces’. The Jurassic Coast is a beautiful part of the UK, and world renowned for its fossils. The reason they are so easy to find is the instability of the cliffs and their tendency to collapse, revealing wonders of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Does the image below describe itself easily enough I wonder..?
I was recently Clay Pigeon Shooting, just outside the Peak District. As we stopped for a brew, we noticed four people casually wandering into the yard and down a track towards the traps. I openly said hello and asked if I could help them. Their reply was that they were out walking and were going into the fields. When I replied that this was private land they retorted with ‘Oh that’s funny..!’ I then explained that this was a clay ground and there was going to be a lot of shooting going on. They had walked past signs, into a working farm yard with moving machinery and thought it was perfectly within their rights. A couple of hours later, I saw the group again, walking down the road, squinting into their phones, and generally looking lost.
Now I’m not trying not to sound all doom and gloom, as there are plenty of very responsible people out there, quietly enjoying their time, investing in local communities and benefiting from fresh air and exercise, but their stories will never hit the press. Websites, radio and the TV will not be filled with their enjoyment, it will be filled with others conflict.
I’ve spoken with people over all the issues above, one word seems to come out – Entitlement. Some people think that they can do what they like, when they like, and where they like. This is not just an outdoors issue, as friends within the Health Services, Policing and Public Sector also report problems.
The question is, how do we deal with this..?
Should all portable BBQ’s be banned in the UK..?
How can you make people not only read signs, but understand them and relate to them..?
How do you make people responsible for their actions..?
There is plenty of useful information available at the touch of a finger, yet people seem ignorant. Heres a very useful page from the BMC.
I vividly remember as a child, asking my Dad what we were doing over a Bank Holiday. His answer always was ‘Staying at home, in the garden lad’. Overcrowding isn’t a new thing, but post COVID, I think it’s got much worse.
We have to remember that the outdoors, moors, fields, woods and forests are nature’s home. We must respect them if we, as humans, are to survive. Without wildlife, particularity pollinators, we’re all doomed. Fires, pollution, littering, doing what we like – all cause damage and though we may see it slight, it all adds up to a greater ill.
Should we save the countryside from the people, or the people from the countryside..?
I’d be interested in your thoughts…