Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal… Keswick

As the Lake District is awarded World Heritage status, Nigel Richardson explores what makes the region so special

Two cheers for Unesco’s designation of the English Lake District as a World Heritage (W H) site. It’s an accolade, if you like accolades, but those of us who know and love the Lake District may be thinking that it requires no official imprimatur to validate it as an exceptional place. Besides, W H sites run the risk of ossifying into museum pieces, whereas the Cumbrian fells, valleys and lakes should remain a living organism, for the local people as well as tourists – and for the sake of the region’s fragile ecology.

But let us at the same time celebrate the Lakes’ unique charms, which will now attract even wider interest from around the world. Once, on the summit of Helvellyn, I met a French walker who grew misty-eyed as he scanned Wordsworth’s “blended holiness of earth and sky”. He said he had hiked in hills and mountains all over the world and nowhere was lovelier than here. “What about your Alps and Pyrenees?” I protested.

“Bigger, yes,” he agreed. “But not so… perfect.” There is indeed something unimprovable about the compactness and proportions of the Lake District (the National Park is just 33 miles east-west and 40 miles north-south). But it isn’t just geological processes that are responsible for the way it looks. This “natural” environment has been heavily influenced by humans, from mining to the sheep grazing that now defines the appearance of the fellsides and has attracted the ire of some environmentalists. Let’s hope the Lake District progresses in a balanced way in tandem with Unesco and we all continue to enjoy it.