I’m white and I hate the Lake District

The head of the Lake District National Park Authority, Richard Leafe, has announced that he wants to attract greater diversity among its visitors, amid concerns that non-white, non-middle-class, non-able-bodied individuals may feel excluded.

The Unesco World Heritage site’s boss argues that, if the area becomes too exclusive, it will “lose… the very reason for calling it a national park”. Cue people who like to use the term “political correctness gone mad” really going at it.

As a white, middle-class, relatively able-bodied type, I am delighted to renounce all claim to the area. For I hate the “Flake” District, not least for it being whiter than Kendal Mint Cake. True, I’m not keen on country matters full stop; one’s never near enough to a Zara. Still, from their monotonous cragginess to their constant drizzle, death-by-giftshop and reek of sheep droppings, the Lakes distinguish themselves as one of Britain’s most dismal holes, soaring sea levels notwithstanding.

Nor can I stomach the Lakean propaganda machine that is romantic verse – all chaps marking their poetic territory over the world’s most tedious landscape. I like a daffodil as much as the next woman, less so what a contemporary described as “the school of whining and hypochondriacal poets” that haunts the region. Wordsworth did not discover the Lake District; however, he did make matters a whole lot worse.

It goes without saying that the Lake District is my partner’s favourite place on earth. I suggest that he and other Lake lovers put a (tea) cake in it and fell off.