I wrote last week about the article by Simon Murray, the NT's Director of Everything, in the Autumn magazine, and promised to say some more about what he had to say about the "more difficult" countryside.
Well, he wrote this:
"The countryside is more difficult. People get that immediate 'wow' from walking in places like the Lake District – there are green fields and sheep grazing or corn being cut – and they don't see the devastation of nature that these pastoral images can conceal."
Wow! indeed. Someone should tell Murray that if visitors to the Lakeland fells ever encounter un-devastated nature (all bracken and rank grass), they won't thank him. I imagine that it was this sort of egregious re-wilding nonsense that was behind the Trust's top dollar payment in Borrowdale to ensure that farming would stop on a large chunk of the valley. To be fair, biodiversically speaking, it will prove to have been a great day for thistles.
Respond