IF THE route to the top of Helvellyn was marked every few hundred yards by an ice cream kiosk and a hamburger stall, you can bet your life they would have been put there by local people.

This is a view of my own, which is expressed to put right a misconception that I am anti the Lake District National Park Authority and the Friends of the Lake District.

A long-departed planning officer for the LDNPA once told me: "I am the abominable no-man and I am proud of it.

"If the only visible effect of an application was a chimney sticking out of the ground, I would think twice about giving it consent."

His point was that once planning permission has been given, there is no going back and once developers have got a toehold the amended plans flood in until there is often little resemblance to the original application.

I am sure he was right and that unregulated development would see Windermere's shore line composed of wall-to-wall conference centres and cable cars to whisk eager tourists to a McDonalds panoramic fast-food cafe on top of the Langdale Pikes.

By the same token, the efforts of FOLD to put the environment first are an essential counter-balance to the constantly creeping pressures of tourism.

And I feel I owe FOLD director Ian Brodie an apology for a sloppy piece of journalism in last week's column.

I should have known better than to trust a daily newspaper report for accuracy when I was told that Ian was quoted in the Guardian as saying the Lake District is not a tourist resort.

"Not true" says Ian, adding that he had merely read out to the Guardian reporter a phrase from a planning inspector's report.

I am sure that Ian knows the tourist role of the National Park very well for back in the 1970s he was the Youth Hostels Association's nominee on the old Lake District Planning Board.

Having said all that, I can't pretend to agree with every policy of the two great powers mentioned above and will continue to have a dig at them as the need arises.

Take the 10mph limit for Windermere, for example. I am no lover of speedboats, but it is just daft to ban them on a lake that is big enough for all with a bit of co-operation.

UPWARDLY MOBILE

MATTHEW Bayes, of Horton-in-Ribbledale, was struck by an item in our sister paper, The Craven Herald, telling how a company had been organising monthly races for mobility shop owners on a Bedfordshire motor racing circuit.

"It got my imagination going, why not have races with stairlifts," he says.

What a good idea, but why send competitors all the way to Bedfordshire?

I would have thought that our own Barbon Hill climb would have been the ideal venue.

Picture the scene, a track attached to the side of the climb and assorted pensioners clad in racing leathers and preparing their turbo-charged chairs for the ride of their lives.

IT'S IN THE POST

AS HE was going away on holiday, my friend Peter Holme decided to take advantage of the Post Office's Keep Safe service.

Rather than deliver letters to an empty house, they store them and deliver them when you get back.

But at the last minute, the tour operators changed his itinerary so that he would arrive back a day

later.

So he phoned Keep Safe the day before he went and they assured him it would not be a problem, but he would have to pay an additional fee for the change.

The morning after he got back he received his post which included both a bill for the extra fee and a threatening letter warning him of dire consequences if he did not pay up the overdue account.

A bit difficult that, when they were hanging on to both the bill and the overdue account notice," said Peter.

NEW SLOGAN

ALAN Harvey, of Sandside, e-mailed me to say: "If campaigners for the Stop the War movement joined forces with the Save Our Public Toilets group, they could adopt and share a common slogan "Give Pees a Chance".

May 9, 2003 14:00