I READ with interest your report of the rally held at Latrigg on the theme What are National Parks for? (Gazette, August 9, 'Rally hears of park concerns').

Observing over recent years the decisions and aspirations of the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA), many of us have been asking this same question.

To grant planning permission to a large supermarket in the heart of the Lake District – Ambleside – is certainly not in keeping with the role of a national park, the mission of which should above all be conservation of its territory for future generations.

Nor is the LDNPA’s scarcely concealed enthusiasm for an application for zip wires at Thirlmere, a plan only dropped because of MOD intervention. And now with a LDNPA Local Plan Review, which proposes a park and ride at Keswick and a gondola system up to Whinlatter, we have more of the same.

The Lake District is not and should not become a theme park, though commercial interests and apparently the LDNPA too are backing every opportunity to make it one.

As for park and ride schemes – they certainly could have enormous impact in preserving the environmental balance of the Lake District, but certainly not as part of this gondola scheme. I contend as an observer - and also as an urban planner - that in probability the majority of the around 20 million visitors to the Lake District every year enter it by car, along the A591 and the A66.

Though the facts would have to be established by a detailed traffic survey, I guess too that most car users have no intention of taking part in outdoor pursuits away from the various ‘honey-pot’ urban areas. Park and ride for these two main arteries would therefore suit their needs conveniently, peaceably and in an environmentally responsible manner.

The LDNPA needs to abandon its obsession with visitor numbers and commercial returns, and get on with the core task of protecting the natural environment. An obvious place to start would be properly researched and planned park and ride. The present volume of traffic into the national park is unsustainable.

Dr R.J.R. Kirkby

Kendal