WITH regards to the proposed zip wires at Thirlmere, it comes as no surprise that Cumbria’s Tourism and Lake District Park Partnership Business Task Force back the commercialisation of the Lake District for the purpose of financial gain and at the cost of the beauty, peace and tranquillity that most visitors to the National Park seek, far from the noisy, polluted and ugly urban centres where they have to live.

Although there are some thrill seekers, most do not want the area to be 'developed' into a theme park with sprawling, ever-bigger hotels (or 'spas').

Indeed, the incorporation into the UNESCO World Heritage List was a disaster, signalling the arrival of millions of additional tourists to roads and a landscape that is already struggling to cope with the tsunami of cars, trampling feet and 'adventurers' who denude the last refuges of native flora which have hitherto managed to evade the sheep by growing on steep crags and deep gills.

The British people like to pride themselves on their countryside and quaint vernacular villages, yet they constantly nibble away at the destruction of this heritage.

Scores of thousands of new houses are either being built or sanctioned in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and few villages and small towns are not threatened with a massive wave of new buildings aimed at a comfortable middle class (not the people who are struggling for housing). These are the very people who value the countryside, and clamour to move there, even though their onslaught is destroying the features they once held dear.

Those of us who can remember Cumbria in the post-war years are aware of the constant slicing away of its attractions. The M6 was perhaps the greatest disruption but could scarcely have been avoided.

We can, however, stop the creeping industrialisation and urbanisation of areas adjacent to the motorway as expressed in the phrase 'development of the M6 corridor', seen by business as a desirable thing and already surging ahead, for example at Tebay and Crooklands.

We can also stop the development of ugly and inefficient energy schemes, such as wind turbines and the threatened power station on a rural site at Old Hutton and disrupting project such as the Thirlmere zip wires.

Unfortunately the profit motive seems to eclipse all other values. Talk of the beauties of Lakeland are soon overridden when there is money to be made: justification being generally that 'jobs will be created'.

Never mind that there are few local people to take these jobs as they have nowhere to live, farms and cottages having been sold off as holiday lets, second homes or gentrified retirement retreats – we can always bring in people from abroad to do the work.

The result is that the traditional “community” where people grew up, went to school and worked together and were often related is now dead. Remember, a local was defined as one who had three generations in the churchyard.

Cumbrians know the changes increasingly destroying this area. Unfortunately offcomers do not realise this when they lyricise on the beauties, thinking the view is changeless.

It should be the duty of every native Cumbrian to vigorously oppose the ongoing assault on our heritage in the pursuit of Mamon. Let the Lake District be conserved for the reasons that attracted visitors in the first place: beauty, tranquillity and tradition and timelessness, not events drawing thousands and noisy intrusive activities such as zip wires, speed boats and the like.

Kent Brooks

Kendal