Parklife!
The countryside without cows, the town without roads...
TO THE GREAT icons of signage – the Apple logo, the Batman symbol, the Nike swoosh – CW would add the symbol for ‘country park’.
You know the one – parents and child standing in jubilation, arms in the air like they just don’t care, celebrating the simple, gleeful fact they are in a country park. Whoever came up with it deserves either the Turner Prize or an OBE.
However small or big, and however well maintained the bins and the toilets are, chances are there is a country park that means something special to you. Maybe you took your first outdoor steps in one, or maybe your child did. Maybe it’s where you learned to climb a tree, ride a bike, row a boat or swing on monkey bars. But most importantly, the chances are it’s
also where you do a lot of your walking.
Not every walk can be a day-trip away into glorious countryside, particularly if it’s your lunchhour stroll. The country park is the solution to that: the countryside tamed and brought into town.
If you could add up all the brilliant ideas hatched in them and all the work quandaries solved in them, you could probably attribute a big slice of Britain’s GDP to the existence of country parks. And heaven knows how many human relationships they’ve forged, nurtured and saved, and how many illnesses or bereavements they have soothed.
Country parks were a creation of the 1960s, as urban sprawl gathered pace and the buffer zones between town centre and residential areas, and between towns and farmland, broke down. In a bid to protect existing green urban spaces and allow for new ones, Harold Wilson’s government signed the Countryside Act 1968. And within its statutes, the country park was born.
“Country parks have a feeling of countryside, or even wilderness, and yet people also think of them as safe, comprehensible and easy to navigate,” says Paul Todd of Keep Britain Tidy – an expert in, and devotee of, country parks.
“In the countryside you might face obstacles like stiles, cattle, uneven tracks or paths that disappear. A country park offers the feel of a rural escape but with no sense that you will go wrong or hit an obstacle. You can just walk and walk and walk.”
Paul oversees the annual Green Flag Awards – the gold standard accreditation for quality public spaces. From quiet beginnings in 1996, last year 1701 green spaces were proudly flying the flag – signifying that they are well managed, well maintained and well used.
The definition of ‘green space’ varies from tiny community gardens to the lofty Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, but most of Britain’s Green Flag acreage is made up of – you guessed it – country parks.
The giants of the family are the Queen Elizabeth country park in Hampshire and Otley Chevin forest park in Leeds, both of which are several miles from end to end. The smallest is Victoria Gardens in Peterborough, at just 0.04 hectares.
“Obviously the criteria will change depending on the size of the space,” says Paul. “But the standard of management, maintenance and engagement has to be consistent. We have to know this space is looked after and well loved.”
The Green Flag idea has been so successful it is now being exported overseas, with towns and
cities in Australia, New Zealand, Abu Dhabi and Africa all submitting parks for Green Flag consideration.
Key to their success, Paul says, has been an increasing awareness of health and fitness, along with the ever-increasing complexity of modern life.
“Most of us would say there is too much going on in our lives, particularly in the urban context,” he adds.
“The pressure release of being able to go somewhere green and detach almost instantly from the built environment, and escape the screens and emails, is something everyone can relate to. Country parks allow you to do that on your doorstep, for free, any day you like.”
Then there are the ‘value-adding’ elements of country parks, like wildlife, heritage and archaeology. At Ferry Meadows Country Park in Peterborough – Country Walking’s own lunchtime shrine – an excavated Roman villa sits serenely on a grassy knoll between two lakes on the River Nene. Other parks have been created on old collieries, quarries, foundries and mills, and have walking routes and information boards that explain and preserve the story behind them. (In fact, explanation of heritage or former use is often a crucial criterion for Green Flag status).
Lepe Country Park in Hampshire is often held up as Britain’s most perfect country park, with its coastal setting, broadleaf woodland and proud history as a staging post for the D-Day landings. But then, as its own website proclaims, it’s ‘where the New Forest meets the sea’. Geographically, Lepe was always onto a winner.
Perhaps even more remarkable are the ones that are in town centres, or overlook industrial zones, somehow tickling you with the shiver of wildness despite the hurly-burly all around. They shouldn’t feel like the countryside, and yet they do.
So here’s to that little symbol of familial jubilation and everything it represents. Yes, this magazine is about country walking – but when we can do country walking in our lunch break (and minus cows and stiles), we’re all up for that too.
uFind the complete list of Green Flag-winning parks at www.greenflagaward.org.uk