I'M not an apologist for inappropriate activity in the Lake District National Park; but I guess that I am an apologist for those of us who fear that the World Heritage Site status awarded to the park (on cultural grounds) will be abused to further restrict the activities of those whose activities may not be fashionable.

Christine Muir and David Collard (Letters, July 13) appeal to the park authority to do just that when they invoke the UNESCO award to ban recreational 4x4 motor vehicles from the Tilberthwaite to Bridge End road.

Are they deaf to the fact that industry far noisier and land-scarring than motor vehicles has resulted in some of the culture that the award values highly? Users of the Tilberthwaite Road cannot but imagine what the mined and quarried landscape must have been like 100 years ago. Are they blind to the fact that the award was granted despite the route's long history of being a motor-road like the many other motor-roads that pass through our fells, and not conditional on any change being made to that?

Most of the time there are no 4x4s on the Tilberthwaite Road, and if there is it is no more than two or three minutes before they are out of sight and sound to other users.

The award recognises the centuries of ongoing change and development that has resulted in the current landscape which ,of course, doesn't stop in the opening years of the 21st century.

The National Park's Head of Park Management stated that: "'The overall strategy is one of management and containment through partnership working.". Of course that's how it should be; recognising that it is everyone's national park, not just those who seek some sort of moral high-ground.

That's what has got us to the place we are now - and still able to take the award. Recreational motor vehicle users are well practised at working in partnership with national park authorities to respond to change, just like other interests must have done over the centuries - each in their part adding to the cultural heritage.

The Tilberthwaite road, and a few other unsealed roads in the national park, give us a rare view of some heritage that has largely been tarred-over. Facilitating managed use by motor vehicles is part of keeping that heritage so that it doesn't become just another place to walk or ride a horse or mountain-bike.

Robert Wilson

Kendal