Yorkshire Dales national park to take in parts of Lancashire and Cumbria
This article reveals how the white rose of north west yorkshire is to take on a red/pink tinge. We were in Clapham recently I worked out we wouldn’t have to travel very far west to get our feet wet on the Lancashire coast. The article reveals:
“Yorkshire’s ancient ambition to straddle northern England from sea to shining sea has moved a step closer with plans to add a large chunk of Lancashire to the Yorkshire Dales national park. The proposal approved by Natural England on Wednesday brings the famously beautiful landscape’s boundary to within six miles of the Irish Sea at Morecambe Bay and links the park directly to the Lake District for the first time. The long-debated revisions now need only the approval of the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, and look almost certain to go ahead. But they face last-ditch opposition from some influential critics, who argue that the Lune Valley and Howgill Fells have stayed peaceful and less-visited without national park status.”
I was at Sheffield Town Hall today and whilst waiting for my meeting read a plaque commemorating those ramblers who campaigned for open access to the countryside and the creation of National Parks. I know I have sometimes critcised the development track records of National Park authorities but I have to say without taking sides between the red and white rose that this extension of national park status as a general principle seems a really positive development from my perspective.