Hikers, cyclists and lovers of the great outdoors will be able to fly direct to the Lake District this summer when scheduled passenger flights to the national park resume after a 25-year hiatus.

Services to Carlisle Lake District Airport have been on the cards for several years but today it announced that commercial and business flights will restart on June 4.

Full details of airlines and routes are yet to be revealed but the airport, owned by the Stobart Group since 2009, has identified London, Belfast and Dublin as key connections. It is believed flights will be operated in the first instance by Stobart Air, which runs scheduled services under the brands Aer Lingus Regional and Flybe.

The nearest operational airport to the Unesco World Heritage site is currently Manchester, around a 90-minute drive to the south.

“Carlisle Lake District Airport will have a huge impact on Cumbria’s visiting economy and is also a key strategic business asset for the county,” said Graham Haywood, executive director of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, which has invested £4.95m in the development of the airport.

A Cumbrian hill has inched its way to mountain status.

Calf Top, near the Yorkshire Dales and Sedbergh, was measured in 2010 at 1999.9ft (609.579m), just under the Ordnance Survey’s 2000ft threshold.

New methods of calculating height now show it to be 2000.02ft (609.606m).

Geodetic analyst Mark Greaves said the peak had originally appeared to be “very, very close” to being a mountain but “about three quarters of an inch too low”.

It was so close, they measured it twice.

‘A better measurement’

“Calf Top has not grown,” Ordnance Survey said.

“The change in height has resulted from improvements to the OS GPS [global positioning system] coordinates network and even greater precision on how we measure heights from the mean sea level in Britain.”

It was unlikely the change would push any other Cumbrian hills into the mountain category and it would have no effect on OS maps, which have figures rounded to the nearest metre, Mr Greaves added.

Ben Nevis “gained” height in March but for a different reason.

They “just took a better measurement” than surveyors in the 1940s had managed, Mr Greaves said.

Some earth movement – “tectonic uplift and what’s called post glacial rebound” – could also account for the increase, he said.

A teenage farmer has accused the National Trust of endangering farming for future generations by acquiring a piece of land in the Lake District, which has sparked an outcry in the area over fears it could end an agricultural tradition going back thousands of years.

Fifteen-year-old George Purcell, who began farming Herdwick sheep with his parents when he was 11, said the National Trust’s actions had put the future of farming in the Lake District in jeopardy.

Purcell moved to Kendal with his parents, William Purcell, a part-time English teacher, and Jenny Willis, when he was four. He joined an outcry in the area after the charity bought the land and sheep of Thorneythwaite farm, but not its farmhouse or outbuildings, last month.

The historic farm in Borrowdale, near Keswick, has a flock of 413 Herdwick sheep, a rare breed that the author Beatrix Potter once helped save from extinction. There were concerns about what would happen to the sheep, but the charity has insisted they will be saved.

This week the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg accused the National Trust of bullying. Lord Bragg, a Cumbrian, said the charity’s “mafia-style” tactics would destroy “centuries of what working men and women have created”.

The charity’s actions have upset residents of Borrowdale and farmers who had hoped to buy the house and land and keep it running as a working farm.

The small village of St Bees in Cumbria has been named as the best place in the UK to raise a family.

The study, from the annual Family Hotspots Report by finance specialist Family Investment, examined a range of factors, such as exam results, crime rates and the cost of living.

The picturesque village came first as it was deemed to have a close knit community, a low crime rate, as well as being home to a private boarding school which dates back to 1583. With salaries averaging at £27,200 per year, and an average two-bedroom home costing just £139,000, the coastal village was hard to beat on prices.