AS A native Cumbrian born in Lorton, in the old county of Cumberland, I could not believe what I was reading on the Gazette's readers' letters over several weeks, complaining about tourism in Lakeland (Letters, August 8, 'Beauty spots overwhelmed' and 'Tourists can't be dispersed'; and August 22, 'Vocabulary of tourism').
What a lot of nonsense!
What else have we got here? Farming, forestry, slate mines and limited building work because of our national park status.
Cumbria is an industrial powerhouse with BAE Systems, Sellafield, GlaxoSmithKline etc, but these industries are not in the Lake District.
How long have tourists been coming here? All these comments in letters to the Gazette are so selfish in the context of our much-loved tourists. Do people not realise this is now a World Heritage Site, and the best is yet to come for people like me, who love the tourist season.
As for the traffic problems mentioned, I have not noticed them, and I have travelled many times on buses between Bowness Pier and Windermere. Those chaps driving the buses don't seem to have any problems, although their driving skills are way above average.
Finally, to the reader who wrote about swans at Bowness (Letters, July 11, 'Swans were sad sight'), all I can say is our visitors from the Far East love them and so do I!
Philip Ridley
Colton, nr Ulverston
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