Talkback: Lakes Zip-Wire Application Withdrawn

Gutted!

I love the lakes but it's ideas like these that allow everyone to enjoy the outdoors. Honister is hardly the most picturesque part of the lakes so why not exploit it for what it is?

If the zip wire was visibile from the path up Haystacks then couldnt it be moved slightly?

The path or the zip-wire? I figure anything that leads from the top of a mountain to the valley floor is going to be pretty hard to camouflage. And as for Honister not being picturesque, I was up there in the snow earlier this year and it was stunning, really stunning.

Part of the concern over the zip-wire is simply the possibility that it could attract a large number of additional visitors into an area with narrow mountain roads and relatively little parking.

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

Best news I've heard in a while

It hasn't been mentioned but the noise created by these things travels a huge distance, quite a few of them in the alps on the ski resorts. Turns the hill side into a noisy theme park.

Not to mention that the zip wire (if I understand it correctly) would be in a national park where it has no place.
It's the word EXPLOIT that I can never get. Isn't there already way too much senseless exploitation already?

It hasn't gone away for good.... 

It's never ending isn't it?. Perhaps the best thing would be to sack all the members of the LDA who are even considering such a thing in a Nat. Park and start again because they have obviously seriously missed the point of what a national park was supposed to be. They very obviously do not have the best interests of the park at heart.
(I wonder how much money will eventually change hands to get this through?)

Although it's not technically a single track road through Buttermere and over into Borrowdale, most visitors seem to drive it as though it were - i.e. slowly and nervously and on occasion ceasing to move at all.  The incline on both sides is quite severe and twisty, and the mine centre is slap in the middle of this stretch.  There is no space to widen it (without blowing up parts of the hills either side), and there is nowhere to provide any extra parking (without blowing up parts of the fell).

Buttermere has traditionally been one of the more isolated valleys, which accounts for its particular peaceful charm.  It has become much more frequently visited in the last two decades that I've noticed, but those visitors tend to be fairly peaceful walkers, attracted by the quietness of the place.  Introducing screamers on a rope just does not fit with the history, the current use, or the specific character of this valley.  And since there is already the chance to scream on a rope a matter of a few miles away, it cannot be 'adding' to tourism in the North Lakes since tourists would already be travelling to Grizedale if they so wished.

Besides we should be keeping National Parks in aspic so they will stay exactly as they are so visitors can come and look at the countryside and the few remaining locals just like they do in a safari park. Driving through, but don't feed the locals!!

Sorry but it is a development like any other. The planners have a duty to look into it and treat it just like say the Lakeland motor museum building in the Backbarrow area or the new GRizedale buildings (the Yan!!!). You have to have a reason not to allow it. IF he overcomes all the planning, environmental, local and legal reasons to stop it then it should and go ahead. I say IF he does. I don't think it should be banned just because some people who like to visit for a walk once or twice a year IF that don't like hte look of it. Also there are a lot of organisations in the Lakes run by busybodies who don't seem to realise the Lakes is a working part of our country with important needs other than looking good.

Of course I am against it. It is wrong. Also I have kind of gone off the guy who owns the mine so anything he wants I am against on principle. Like the Wainwright memorial statue on Fleetwith or Haystacks that he proposed. He does like to be in the news. It gets him some free promotion for himself and the mine. I don't mind people making money out of visitors to the Lakes and indeed I do think he has done good things with that mine. I just have a funny feeling of mistrust ever since the OMM event that was down there and the way the news was helped to inflate the situation with his interviews. Thats has flavoured his otherwise good business development.

As far as being innapropriate for traffic. There are buses going ove Honister (or was when I were a kid) so why not cars? If he sorts out parking then why not allow cars over the hause to the mine? There is usually quite a few cars going over there all day in summer. Especially so in good weather (May and June these last few years).

The SSSI is important and should be protected but if he sorts out that issue then why not? Noise? Pollution? Visitor numbers? There is already plenty of noise, pollution and visitors driving past there anyway. I very much doubt the people going there will be much different than those going for the via ferrata. If that is the case then would you really get that many more people. Especially since it would need more effort to get there than say Go Ape at Whinlatter.

All I say is let the planning process go ahead, I'm sure it had been publicised enough that people with valid objections will present them and the right decision will probably happen. (If I believed that happens all the time I'd be an idiot - so I don't).

Have to wait until the new application comes in. Also, perhaps we should look at that proposal and not the headlines that one side or another gets out there to the detriment to the other sides' arguments.

Why waste time and money going through endless planning appeals? I can't believe the application was even considered in the first place. They should just tell him to bugger off.

Time to go wrote (see)

Besides we should be keeping National Parks in aspic so they will stay exactly as they are so visitors can come and look at the countryside and the few remaining locals just like they do in a safari park. Driving through, but don't feed the locals!!

There is a difference between 'preserving in aspic', and upsetting the balance of what is currently a working valley (farms and hotels) by introducing what is basically a fairground ride.  Whether you agree with the principle or not, planning regulations consider 'change of use' relating to a property to be a valid consideration because they recognise the value of coherent development in an area.  In this case, I personally don't think screamers on a rope are the natural next economic or environmental development for this particular valley.  It will not economically benefit any of the local businesses except the mine owner himself, and it certainly will not increase the value of the environment.

Time to go wrote (see)

I don't think it should be banned just because some people who like to visit for a walk once or twice a year IF that don't like hte look of it. Also there are a lot of organisations in the Lakes run by busybodies who don't seem to realise the Lakes is a working part of our country with important needs other than looking good.

As far as being innapropriate for traffic. There are buses going ove Honister (or was when I were a kid) so why not cars? If he sorts out parking then why not allow cars over the hause to the mine? There is usually quite a few cars going over there all day in summer. Especially so in good weather (May and June these last few years).

I don't think anybody has suggested their opposition is simply because "oh, I dunno, I just don't really like the look of it", have they?  I live in the Lake District (and before moving, stayed in Buttermere about once a month for the last 35 years...) and understand that as far as the rural economy goes, "looking good" is actually quite a financial necessity for many of the main businesses, as well as the sideline businesses that are based here. 

If you haven't been since you were a kid, I assume none of this really affects you then.  There are still occasional buses - and you should see the tears and difficulties some people get into trying to get out of their way whilst burning their clutches out on the slope.  I don't know how many more times I can make the point that that road is not suitable for heavy traffic.  There is a car park at the mine, on the small amount of level ground that exists right at the top of the pass.  Short of blowing up the hillside, there is no further room for expansion.  And I don't think blowing up the fell to make the mine owner a little bit more money than he already has is necessary.

I cant see what difference a zip wire would have made to the landscape around Honister Mine which is already a vision of post industrial desolation.  For visual intrusion, consider the impact of the 3 metre wide eroded path leading to the drum house which is visible for miles, the road leading to the top of the mine workings on the Fleetwith side, and the spoil heaps cascading down the mountain on the other side.  A zip wire complete with screaming joyriders would be hardly noticed in comparison.

Too much of the reaction to this plan has been the usual knee jerk reaction of those who wish to preserve the Lakes as a twee 'World of Lakeland' theme park, stuck in a 1950s world where apple cheeked shepherds dispensing gems of local wisdom to reverential middle class visitors, and dear old AW waxing lyrical on the view from Orrest Head, was about as exiting as it got.  They forbid any development on all grounds because that what it is, development, and we cant have that can we?  Not in our sacred Lakes.

I agree that Honister gets a lot of petrified motorists crawling over it, and that any increase would not be good.  On the other hand, the day is not far off when traffic into parts of the Lakes will have to be regulated, and some sort of park and ride scheme will have to become operational.  Why not start this with using the Honister Rambler, a bus service currently heavily subsidized by local taxpayers to run mostly empty over the pass.  In any case, have the Go Ape facilities at Grizedale and Whinlatter contributed that much extra traffic?

Whether Mark Wier needs enriching further is a moot point, but he is a local business employing local people, in an area that is short of opportunities.  Beautiful as it is, you cant eat the view as someone said, and in an area of ghost villages full of second home owners, (who protest louder than anyone else at the thought of any change) anything that assists and preserves the local economy has to be considered carefully, and not dismissed out of hand.

" In any case, have the Go Ape facilities at Grizedale and Whinlatter contributed that much extra traffic?"

Aren't the Go Ape facilities at Grizedale and Whinlatter in far more appropriate locations for such 'development' in any case?

Well Chris Lawence 5 perhaps we should perhaps remove park status from all the parks so that local economies can develop healthily? So that even more people can multiply and occupy the land and spread out as they have everywhere else? Because with blinkered anthrpocentric views like yours the already miniscule wild lands in the UK don't stand a bloody chance. What was the purpose, in your opinion, in designating a park in the first place?

My point is that in England at least, National Parks are management of a man made landscape that has evolved and been massively altered over centuries of use and abuse.  The Lake Distict is a prime example of this, and it is what it is.  That it continues to exist so successfully is in no small part to its beauty that has successfully withstood centuries of development, some good and some bad.  Also the fact that so many still wish to see it complete with all the alterations it has endured.

  We cannot put a moratorium on all development, simply because it is new and different, and perhaps not what the Lakes is about.  It is many things to many people.  We, as lovers of the outdoors, perpetrate and encourage through use, the intrusions of the massive car parks at the bottom of mountains, the disfiguring erosion scars up them, the litter and rubbish on top of Helvellyn, the dozens of outdoor shops in Keswick and Ambleside etc etc.  This zip wire is a much more controlled development, and a logical extension of the via ferrata that is already there.  How many of us think via ferratas (an instrument of war if anything) are now very much part of the outdoor world and a wonderfully challenging way of getting to some incredibly scenic bits of wilderness?

Getting back to wilderness and National Parks.  If we wanted to truly preserve wilderness in its pristine state, we would have to remove humans and all their traces from them as they do in Australia, East Africa and other parts of the world.  We cant do this in the UK, because the areas designated as National Parks are already part and parcel of where and how we live in this country.  In Australia, a country blessed with ample wilderness, the concept of wilderness is taken so seriously that the park service spends a lot of time removing traces of humanity in those areas it administers.  To go to the same extent in the Lakes would mean removing those disfiguring dry stone walls, returning the swathes of forestry to nature, getting rid of the sheep that overgraze and denude the landscape of wild flowers, and carefully controlling visitor numbers with permits.  In this country, wilderness is an interpretation that we give a landscape that we have been altering and controlling for centuries.  At what point do you call a halt to all development and say that only some things are acceptable because they are traditional and well loved, and others are not?

woozle wrote (see)

Well Chris Lawence 5 perhaps we should perhaps remove park status from all the parks so that local economies can develop healthily?

Woozle... does the Lake District really have 'national park' status, and if it does, then according to who? According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), there aren't ANY 'national parks' in Britain.

As for developments in the Lake District, it's been a standing joke among those who watch planning applications that if you're really serious about getting the development you want, then you have to budget for an appeal.

CL5. I see your point, you share it with most people I would imagine, and it would take pages to disagree successfully with everything you say () but the main thing that I disagree with is that a moratorium is a total must if anything is to be preserved. At a certain point people must come second. I know that this can be done because there are examples of it being done successfully. People are not the be all and end all of everything. People will continue to produce other people and sooner rather than later massive expansion and development into the parks will take place. The only way to stop this is by stopping all development. Can't find a job in the lakes? Then sod off out of it and find one elsewhere sort of thing.
It doesn't even have to be negative. Simply, as happens (statistically anyway) here, once your activity is finished you leave. No transformation, no development.
As for what's included in the park, I realy don't give a crap about the people in them. For me either cut the developed parts out of the park or better still cut the people out of the park. I'm only interested in the presearvation of the land for the future. Cultural aspects have no place imo.
Somebody once said, in reply to the usual argument about stone walls having to come down, that the natural stone buildings and walls will decay and crumble and be absorbed by the land. The brick and metal and glass will be an eyesore for centuries. Which about sums up my own opinion.

Paddy - I don't know whether it's a NP or not but only read repeatedly that it is one. If the UK decides it's a park then that's fine by me. I don't bow to international anything and wouldn't expect the UK to do so either.

woozle wrote (see)

CL5. I see your point, you share it with most people I would imagine

Well certainly they're the most eloquent replies I've seen on this thread so far.

woozle wrote (see)

As for what's included in the park, I realy don't give a crap about the people in them.

And that's an opinion I would imagine you don't share with most people.

Eloquent, yes, but lacking in any substance other than a somewhat patronising and dismissive attitude towards folk opposed to Weir Enterprises. I'm sure the local economy is just crying out for some fairground attendant minimum wage jobs. And yes, I live in Cumbria.

Woozle; you're as far in the opposite direction as is possible to go and although I'm against the Zip wire, your opinions aren't the kind I'd ally myself with.

woozle wrote (see)

As for what's included in the park, I realy don't give a crap about the people in them.

I don't have figures, but my understanding is that, as in most National Parks in the UK, most of the land in the LDNP is privately owned. Thus the people about whom you 'don't give a crap', actually own it.