How many toursists visit lake district each year
19.2 million visitors
List 3 types of attractions in Lake district ?
1) Beautiful scenery - Large lakes (e.g windemere) and mountains (e.g scafell pike)
2) Cultural attractions - Beatrix potter’s house
3) Activities - Water sports, bird watching, fishing, rock climbing, hiking and mountain biking
Environmental impacts of tourism
1) Catbells a popular mountain for walkers, but large amount of ppl using footpath has lead to severe erosion of main forrpath
2) Tourists park on grass verges, damaging vegetation
3) Noise, erosion and water pollution is caused by boats and water sports on windemere
4) However toursits money can be reinvested in the environment e.g from 2015-2016, the ‘visit Give protect scheme’ raised 19000 for the fix the fells project to repair eroded footpaths.
Economic impacts
1) Tourism employed over 18,000 people in 2017 and made almost 1.5 billion. This supports local businesses, but work tends to be seasonal and low paid
2) The average price of a house in national park is over 350,000 but average local income is only 20,000 so many local people are unabel to afford it
Social impact
- Estimated that 83 % of vsiitors arrive by car. Leady to heavy traffic
- Businesses in many villages cater for tourists rather thajn locals - e.g in Ambleside 40% of cafes, resteraunts, hotels etc
Prices of everyday local goods are high and local residents often travel to kendall to by food
3) Almost 25% of properties are second homes. This means fewer people live all year, so bus services are limited, primary schools in langford valley have closed and doctors are udnerfunded due to too few patients
Management strategy -Traffic
Improving public transport to reduce the volume of vehicles on the narrow roads
- Cross Lakes Shuttle bus links the lakes of Windermere and Coniston Water and services the ‘honey pot’ sites of Hawkshead, Grisdale and Tarn Hows
- Park & Ride scheme in Grasmere has been introduced
- Several dual carriageways have been built around lake district
- Go lakes travel programme which aims to reduce cars by introfucing bike and ride buses
Management strategy - Footpath erosion
- Paths have been resurfaced using hard-wearing materials like rock and plastic mesh (Upland path landscape restoration project)
- Fix the fells - maintaining and reparaing mountain paths supported by national trust. Local stones and sheep fleece are used to make well-drained solid surface
Management strategy - House prices
- Restricting second homes e.g by only allowing people who have lived in bowness for 3 years ti by homes there
- Affordable houses and local occupancy scheme
For example, A 10 millionpund project wass approved in 2016 to turn the der3elict Backbarrow Ironworks into a housing development. The plan includes five affordable houses, to be completed by 2019. 2
Management strategy - Noise, erosion and pollution from water sports
-Zoning schemes mean that only certain areas of some of the lakes can be used for water sports
Lake Windermere has a 10-knot speed limit for all boats and 6 knots in some of the zones
