Liz Walker: We need relief from the cost of national parks

We have 10 in England. If you can name them all you should at once enter a quiz team. They receive around £50m a year, a mere drop in the ocean compared to keeping a nuclear submarine floating in that very same ocean, but substantial nonetheless. Now there are to be cutbacks, ranging from three to 33 per cent, depending on who you believe. Everyone is naturally very shocked. Well. Everyone except me.

I worked for the National Trust once in my varied career. We were responsible for an area of wild and rugged moorland which provided a meagre living for its sheep farmers, a good day out for families and a proposal venue for young men of various intentions.

One day, the National Trust agent decided to build lavatories. “At present, visitors are forced to go behind the nearest rock!” he wrote vehemently.

To alleviate this dire situation, we were to spend a small fortune on stone lavatories with attendant septic tank and soakaway, litter disposal facilities, notice boards telling people about the area, signboards telling people where the lavatories and notice boards were, cleaners, a warden and for all I know counselling for the peregrine falcons who had lived there undisturbed for many years and now had lavatories to look at.

So those in search of a wild area of moorland now had a tasteful but suburban development. And the farmers were up in arms. Instead of the odd bit of natural waste, which did not seem to be causing typhoid, they now had concentrated run-off. What is so wrong with a pee behind a rock? We’re getting soft.

The first national park in this country came into being in 1949. It was a spin-off from the American model of Yosemite and Yellowstone, and they do not have tasteful loos. They have wilderness, and if it’s visitors or the bears, the bears win paws down. Should you find yourself caught short on a mountainside and feel the need of some facilities, you get back in your car and drive to some.

Crowded Britain takes a different view. National parks must conserve and enhance, while promoting understanding and enjoyment of our beautiful spaces. If I had to set one up today, I’d put in some draconian planning constraints, with an expert advisory committee, tell the farmers they can only do B&B if they keep the footpaths in good nick and leave it at that.

As it is, we provide grants on grants on grants. Fifty million? Don’t make me laugh. Fifty million from one source perhaps. What about the finance for a study to see if you can generate electricity from water? Or the cosy little newspapers, telling everyone what all that money is being spent on? Or the Association of National Park Authorities, where all the heads of all the national parks get together and discuss how difficult it is to run a national park these days with all these cuts?

There is even a Campaign for the Protection of National Parks, part financed by government money. Surely we don’t need to pay protesters to protest, in some weird upholding of human rights? Must have is not the same as nice to have. Remember that.

The big problem is always the blasted visitors of course. Too many of them, making a mess. So why are we building them car parks, and creating honeypot villages which become gift encrusted no go areas, and giving them visitor centres with patronising displays where schoolchildren can be penned instead of getting out and getting dirty?

If absolutely pushed, I might provide a bus service into a park. No parking except for residents, everyone else has to get out and do something. Walk, cycle, find a farmer willing to provide an invalid scooter if you must, but if you want to go you have to make an effort.

No more turning every footpath into one accessible by buggy, we have municipal parks for that. Beautiful, wild places don’t stay that way if you start doing stuff. A bright yellow footpath is intrusive.

A notice on every gate is a crime. Perhaps the farmer has signed up for stewardship, I’m sure the Country Code is the national park’s answer to the Ten Commandments, but hold the notices. Please.

I can hear the pubs and tea room owners crying from here. But honestly, how much better to be providing tractor and trailer trips up the dale instead of flogging calories to the overfed?

In the early days, the only visitors to national parks were earnest young people from the cities, overjoyed to be out in the beautiful world. They brought sandwiches. If you want shops and pavements and, yes, lavatories, find them elsewhere. national park cuts? Bring them on.

* Liz Walker is a farmer, novelist and publications officer of Penistone show.