I felt I had to write to support the views of the Wilkinson family (Gazette, April 19, 'Farmers leave over damage').

It is some years since I have walked around Tilberthwaite and a friend suggested a walk from Tilberthwaite over to Blea Tarn via the old rifle range remains.

I was expecting a Wordsworth scene of views and solitude as in the past, but no - as soon as we had passed through the farmyard and shut the gates a caravan of bright orange 4x4s appeared, reopened the gate, gave no way for us and pushed us out of the road and into the bog at the side.

We then spent a lovely walk either catching up with them as they scrapped over the bedrock - forcing us yet again into the bog and mud to get past - or passing them to be forced off the road again a few metres on!

This part of the walk was stressful and completely ruined - not what we had come for!

The track is so degraded it is down to the bedrock and almost impossible to walk. The scar is being made wider by people being forced out of the way. As we went along we had a lovely view of parts of plastic vehicle mouldings littering the ground that had been removed by the exposed bedrock.

Part way along the track a drain had been built to obviously stop water washing the track away, but this had also been completely trashed by the 4x4s running over it as no soil now remains to protect it!

Is this really what the National Park and the Lake District is all about? I felt embarrassed as other walkers struggled past. These off road vehicles are, in my opinion, destroying everybody's amenity. The people in the 4x4s could have been driving around a site in Salford for all the attention they were giving the landscape.

My family has lived and farmed in the Lakes for generations and I think it is time the Lake District National Park Authority decided if they wanted a Disneyland (which is the way they seem to be going at the moment) or a landscape all can enjoy in peace as experienced by the likes of Wordsworth, Ruskin and Potter - after all this is what the majority of visitors come here to enjoy!

I assume this is why the LDNPA has courted the World Heritage Site status for the area to help protect and enhance this jewel that is so easily tarnished by ill-conceived commercial exploitation.

These routes were never designed or meant for this level of damaging traffic. The fact a long-established farm is being given up due to recent intrusion and damage to the landscape is surely enough for both the LDNPA and the National Trust to realise all is not well in paradise!

Peter M. Lowe

Ulverston