Opinion: Barking parking in the Lake District

While I sit here looking out on the windy, wet and slightly dismal weather, I hope we’ll soon be moving into a warm dry spring.

It’s not nice when you’re this low to the ground.

Hopefully it’ll soon be time to witness Cumbria in all its glory as the plants burst forth with fresh greenery, flowers bloom and millions of people come to visit the area.

I think Cumbria is beautiful, the coast, the lakes, the hills and fells there are so many places worthy of praise both inside and outside the national park.

Problem is, as soon as the weather gets a bit better everyone and their dog will want to come visit! Which leads us on to that age old issue, parking.

Every year it’s the same cycle, come visit the beautiful place, followed by calls for more car parks and the usual news that some roads have been made impassable for emergency services to get through should there be an emergency. Is there a solution to this?

This, unfortunately several problems wrapped into a bigger issue. The cure is not more car parks.

Sorry but it isn’t. People often avoid what is already there because they refuse to pay for parking, instead leaving cars on verges and blocking passing places all over.

Some seem to believe that because they have decided to complete a specific walk that they must absolutely do that without any consideration and will park anywhere they please if the car park is full.

This is not a fault of not enough car parking spaces rather a fault of people believing that they are entitled to do what they want when they want and that entitlement will lead them to leave their car anywhere, blocking access, across gates, in front of driveways etc.

When I was a pup if we went to, for example, Wasdale Head, and the parking was full we went elsewhere or parked up further out where there was parking.

There isn’t an excuse for bad parking, it’s the driver at fault.

Simple: Don’t park where you shouldn’t, don’t block access and leave room for a tractor or fire engine to get through.

Imagine you block the road, have a medical emergency and spend hours in pain because you’ve blocked access for the ambulance or mountain rescue.

Build more and more car parks all you are doing is destroying the very area that people are coming to visit.

What else would help? Better public transport. If you want more car parks build them outside of the national park and improve links into the visitor hotspots.

But this also is necessary for places like Silloth, Drigg, areas like Cark and Cartmel.

That horrible Cumbria Cat has a point that the old Workington to Penrith rail line will probably never reopen, but could a lighter system be brought in, would trams work?

At the end of the day the problem is simply too many cars wanting to be in the same places at the same time and a lack of any alternative in many cases.

So if we want to keep this count as beautiful as it is now, which less damage done we need to embrace and expand any alternatives to the car, we need to be able to ferry people about effectively without damaging the area or causing masses of pollution.

Woof woof!