"The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr Harold Macmlllan) has confirmed, without modification, the Yorkshire Dales National Park (Designation) Order submitted by the National Parks Commission.
The proposal to set up a National Park in the Yorkshire Dales has been the subject of considerable discussion by two County Councils, eight other local authorities and farming organisations since it was first made in 1947.
The park comprises a total of about 680 square miles and lies wholly within the North and West Ridings. It includes the most picturesque parts of the Dales and some of the finest limestone scenery in Britain. From Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale, the park extends northwards through Malham to Ribblesdale and Upper Wharfedale, stretches across to Swaledale and the outskirts of Richmond, and includes Arkengarthdale and Bowes Moor.
A letter to the National Parks Commission announcing the Minister's decision states that he is of the opinion that the area is clearly of National Park quality.
Referring to the objections raised by farmers from the northern Dales, the letter states: "The farmers objected in particular to the inclusion in the Order of purely agricultural land, especially in Wensleydale and parts of Swaledale, where the land was largely enclosed and intensively farmed and where a tuberculosis eradication scheme was about to come into operation. They feared increased risk of loss and damage through trespass, ignorance and carelessness if the Order was confirmed, and urged that the park should be confined to the uplands."
This objection, says the letter, had been made on previous occasions and was one which the Commission had constantly in mind.
Dealing with a plea to confine the park to the uplands, the letter states that this would remove some of the most attractive scenery. "For these reasons, the Minister does not consider that he would be justified in excluding these areas of agricultural land from the park."
Mr R M Hodgson, of Askrigg, a former chairman of the North Riding and South Durham Branch of the NFU, said last night: "Farmers will be disappointed by the decision. We felt that there was already sufficient right of access to the Dales countryside.
"We are not opposed to visitors to the Dales. We appreciate and welcome them, as long as they are well behaved, but we felt that designation would open the door to undesirable visitors who have no affinity with the country and weaken the hand of the farmer in trying to maintain standards of behaviour. Farmers in this area have been made even more cautious by a report from the Peak District National Park of damage to fences and to hill farms there."

Final farewell to 'The Groaner'
1977 Music apart, golf was the love of Bing Crosby's life and on October 14 it was on a golf course that he met his end. This was our report.
"Bing Crosby died of a heart attack while playing golf yesterday. Crosby, 73, collapsed at the 17th hole of the Moraleja Golf Club, near Madrid. He was taken to Madrid's Red Cross Hospital but was found to be dead. Crosby was on a golfing holiday. He was playing a foursome with three Spanish champions. His partner was Manuel Pinero, and they were playing Valentin Barrios and Cesar de Zulueta.
He recently completed a tour of Britain, including a sell-out performance at London's Palladium. Crosby said the tour was a test of his recovery from a back injury suffered in a fall from a stage in Pasadena, California, during a show to mark his 50th year in show business.
He swept to fame in the 1930s as the singer with the relaxed, easy style. His crooning of romantic songs influenced scores of popular singers, including his friend Frank Sinatra. His fame as an actor rested on his series of "Road" films with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. He made more than 70 films and won several Hollywood Oscars.
Crosby was twice married. His first wife, Dixie Lee, by whom he had two sons, died more than 20 years ago. He married again in 1957 to a 23 year-old actress, Kathryn Grant, and began raising a second family of two boys and a girl.
Friends were trying last night to contact Mrs Crosby in the United States to break the news to her.
Among the scores of tributes was one from Bruce Forsyth, a golfing companion of Crosby's: "I think he would have liked to have gone out this way, playing golf."
Geoffrey Winter wrote: "Effortlessness was the Crosby hallmark, whether he was singing or playing comedy or straight roles. On and off the screen he was a pipe-smoker, and this added to his air of relaxed dependability. Generations of men tried to capture the Crosby vocal range, sometimes deep and resonant as a cello, at others as light and tripping as harp strings. Nobody succeeded. It was the singer himself who, self-deprecatingly coined the expression "The Groaner." When he died, he had sold an estimated 300 million records. Some "groaner."
The professional name Bing came about like this: "I was a great fan of a comic strip up in Spokane," Crosby was reported as saying. "The strip was 'The Bingville Bugle' and its chief character was a man named Bingo.
"I used to imitate this character so people started calling me Bingo. The 'o' was eventually dropped and by the time I was nine years old, everyone called me Bing. Everyone except my mother, that is – she still calls me Harry."
In 1956 Bing denied rumours that he was about to retire. By this time he had made High Society with Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra and had just finished his first film made specially for TV – High Tor.
"One thing is definitely out," he said, "any more 'Road' pictures with Bob Hope. We're getting too old to go chasing cute young things around. Those winks we used to give are turning into tears."
But the film-makers and the public did not agree with him, and six years later came Road to Hong Kong."

Henry VIII's flagship raised from watery grave
1982 On October 11, the Mary Rose rose again after spending the previous 437 years 50 feet beneath the waves off Portsmouth Sound. Raising the former flagship of King Henry VIII in a £4 million operation had been beset by technical problems and had been twice postponed.
Just before midday, one of the pins holding the lifting frame sheared, a steel line snapped and part of the 80 tonne frame smashed down on the hull.
But the ship's skeletal remains of mud-caked timber were in the end successfully re-floated, watched by a flotilla of boats which had gathered off Portsmouth. A cannon was fired from the ramparts of Southsea Castle to signal the historic moment.
The Mary Rose had been 'rediscovered' in 1966 by Alexander McKee, a historian and amateur diver.
Launched in 1510, the Mary Rose had sunk on its way to engage the French enemy fleet in 1545 and between four and five hundred men drowned.
The Mary Rose now forms part of a museum at Portsmouth Historic
Dockyard.

Heseltine prepares to axe 31 British pits
1992 On October 13, the Board of Trade President Michael Heseltine announced up to 31 out of 50 remaining deep mines faced closure. The cuts were to take effect immediately for six pits, which would close at the end of the week, affecting 6,000 miners.
Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers urged miners to fight the government and called the layoffs a "savage, brutal act of vandalism".
Robin Cook, Labour's trade spokesman said the cuts were a "bad decision" not only for the local communities but for tax payers and electricity consumers who would pick up the inevitable costs.
Michael Heseltine dismissed the idea that the UK should follow Germany's lead in preserving its coalfields with extra subsidies. He said industry would not be made more competitive by "forcing costs on to them above the market price."
Chairman of British Coal, Neil Clarke has said the cuts would be "grievous", especially since productivity in the industry had more than doubled in the last six years. But the decision was a consequence of the need to reduce coal output by a minimum of 25,000 million tonnes a year, he said.
At the peak of coal demand during the Second World War there were over one million miners working in 958 mines, which steadily declined after post-war nationalisation. The discovery of North Sea gas and increased imports saw consumption of domestic coal fall further.
After the privatisation of the power industry in 1990, British coal lost out to cheaper imports and to an expansion in gas-supplied electricity generators. British Coal was privatised in 1992, just after the cuts, and the UK coal industry now employs under 12,000 people.

My Mini on the road to Montreux
From: Paul Hotham,Eastgate, Bramhope, Leeds.
Your article featuring Minis in the "Lives and Times" section in the Yorkshire Post (October 5) reminded me of many eventful instances with my own Mini several years ago. My Mini was a 1964 Austin 850cc version with sliding windows, cable door openers, floor mounted starter button, and long curly gear lever, Reg No DWT 950B.
One of the most memorable trips I recall was a visit to the Lake District for a weekend's camping holiday with two friends, their two children and a week's camping gear.
You can imagine the looks we got from some people when, on arrival at the site, four full size adults and two children tumbled out of this tiny car and proceeded to unload all the gear. It had been a trifle cramped I admit, but we got there without any problems – and this in the days before the Settle by-pass, and involved the climb up Buckhaw Brow, which was a bit of a struggle.
I have had many trips in that and other Minis since then, including a visit to Switzerland where the infamous Mini drive universal joint packed up; we struggled slowly from Geneva to Montreux where the garage mechanic listened to my tale of woe and said: "Don't worry mate, I'll soon fix that". He was from Wakefield, and he did fix it.