Sunday 29 December 2019

What if it's Everyone Else That is Right?

From Sky News

The head of the Lake District National Park Authority in Cumbria says the rugged landscape excludes too many people and must change to attract a more diverse mix of visitors.

His warning comes after attempts to make the UNESCO World Heritage site more inclusive have sparked a series of rows with conservationists.

...

Research shows visitors to the Lake District, where the rugged fells inspired the romantic poets and author Beatrix Potter, are too heavily weighted towards older, able-bodied white people.

Why do people even assume that everyone else wants this? My idea of a nice holiday is going to France, barbecuing mergeuz, drinking wine, swimming in a pool, reading books and exploring the history in the local area. I'm not going to go to a place with even worse weather than Wiltshire to spend my days walking up and down muddy hills wearing a cagoule.

I suspect the people who do it probably have a history of doing it. It's what they did with their parents as kids, so they carry on doing it. The people who came over from the Caribbean or from India didn't do it, so it's never grown.

6 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

They are mental. We went to the Lake District for a few days, went on a steam train, a boat ride, strolled through Keswick, went to the car museum etc.

There was no walking or hiking involved, it's just usual touristy stuff (with lovely little mountains and lakes as a back drop).

Mark Wadsworth said...

"I suspect the people who do it probably have a history of doing it. It's what they did with their parents as kids, so they carry on doing it."

In my case, exactly not. Our parents pitched a tent in a field (with permission of farmer I hasten to add) for three weeks and dragged us up and down mountains every day. So when we took our kids last year, we stayed in a static caravan and didn't set foot on the fells, we just did the nice stuff that my spiteful parents wouldn't let us do (boat rides and all that stuff).

Bayard said...

"are too heavily weighted towards older, able-bodied white people."

Oh, FFS! a holiday area that attracts people to walk in rugged countryside is "too heavily weighted towards..able-bodied..people"? Yup, they are called "walkers", you idiots, the clue is in the name.

Lola said...

And, it's really only 'able bodied older people' that can afford to stay in places like the Sharrow bay https://www.sharrowbay.co.uk/

Ralph Musgrave said...

What's behind the "Lake District is hideously white" complaint, is that the advocates of multi-culturalism just CAN'T BEAR IT if there is somewhere that hasn't been culturally enriched.

It's similar to the way in which Muslims are upset about any area of the World which has not been Islamised, or Stalinist communists couldn't abide the idea that there were parts of the globe which still had not, at the end of Stalin's reign, been Stalinised.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RM, it is madness. We can flip this on its head and say "Non-white people should be encouraged to do things they don't want to do".

(Also, when we were in the Lake District a couple of years ago, there were plenty of visitors of Indian descent who were happily doing the same stuff as everybody else, so I don't see a problem anyway).