I ALMOST regret starting the great debate about the exact location of the centre of England or the United Kingdom as different opinions have arrived on my desk almost daily since it began in mid-December.

The latest deserves a mention, however, if only for the fact that Ian Harrison, of Stonecross Green, Kendal, seems to have spent his Christmas break constructing the cardboard model (pictured below) to make his point.

"I was told a few years ago that the geographical centre lies one mile east of Kendal Town Hall on the old Sedbergh Road and that there is a stone marking the spot," he writes.

"However, since reading of the many other claimants for the title, the possibility that my informant could be wrong has entered my mind.

"Consequently I have carried out my own, independent invest-igation and reached the unquestionable conc-lusion that the centre lies within the Forest of Bowland in the centre of the village of Bowland.

"But lest there are premature celebrations by villagers, I should point out that if the isles of Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides are included, the centre moves eight miles north and two miles west to somewhere on Tatham Fell, a point of no significance except to sheep.

"This is only nine miles from Devil's Bridge and so the claim of the bikers that it is the centre is not unreasonable.

"You have mentioned that Ulster should also be included, with a view to dumping the bikes in a centre point located in Morecambe Bay.

"However my calculations show that the centre would be junction 34 on the M6, a more suitable venue for the bikers, but probably not for the Lancashire Constabulary."

NEW IDEAS TO WOO VISITORS ONE can only applaud the Lake District National Park Authority's bold new concept, announced last month, of doing more to attract urban young visitors, ethnic minorities and disabled people to the park.

It will involve the provision of certain facilities not currently available.

Here are a few examples: To make urban youths feel safe in their new environment the white stones route to Helvellyn summit will have to be paved and fitted with regulation streetlights, with a stairlift added for the benefit of the disabled, with direction signs in 28 languages.

The mighty face of Pavey Arc in the Langdales will have to be sacrificed as a graffiti wall to please both the urban young and as a boon to the visually impaired.

In a bid to encourage the newcomers away from Bowness, Ambleside and Keswick, it will be necessary to develop Kentmere into a linear shopping mall.

Park rangers in imitation police cars will patrol the tortuous route over Wrynose and Hard Knott Passes so that boy racers can perfect their skills of high-speed chase and evasion.

Areas of woodland currently used for paintball games will be equipped with street facades so that drug wars techniques can be honed to the high levels needed when they get back to conurbations.

Brockhole National Park Centre will need to be converted to a multiplex cinema facility and disco.

The whole of the frontage on The Glebe, Bowness, will be developed as a fitness centre with windows looking out on to the lake so that users can flog away on cycling or running machines to get fit while enjoying the natural beauty without actually coming into contact with it.

FLOODING PUZZLE I FOUND one television news clip of the Carlisle flooding a bit puzzling.

A solemn sounding newsreader was talking about the grim reality for shocked householders who had to be evacuated from their homes yet the picture showed a boat coming down a street, but full of grinning and waving old ladies.

It reminded me that a few months ago I took some stick from readers who objected to me saying that Boscastle, in Cornwall, would eventually seek to profit from its summer flood.

Over the Christmas period there were several television programmes to show how the village was getting on four months after the deluge and in two different programmes, in two different shop windows, there were signs saying: "Book of the great flood now on sale."

No doubt a Carlisle flood book will be on the shelves before the water entirely drains away into the Solway Firth.