From heritage railways to walks, I make no apology for talking up North Yorkshire’s tourism attractions - Carl Les
Bob Roberts’ letter last week (The Yorkshire Post, 05/08) was a passionate, if unpleasant, narrative about a place and environment he holds dear. I make no apology for feeling the same way about The Great North Road that has shaped a lot of my life, nor my experiences in hospitality, retail, farming and property, but not in harbour management, much to his dismissal.
Also the book he dismisses as a “fanciful novel” is nothing of the sort. It is a factual account, containing a critique of the importance of England’s premier road, with historical facts about Roman Britain, the importance of the development of coach travel before the coming of the railways, May fairs, the early life of Oliver Cromwell, the Pilgrim Fathers, Margaret Thatcher, the Bentley Colliery disaster of 1931 and the developing economies that happened beside and because of it. I could go on at length. The only fiction in the book is a vivid interpretation of cruel life under the Norman Conquest. The author warrants more respect.
I accept my life experiences will inform my thinking, but he is wrong to think that my vision is through tourism-tinted glasses alone and in any case these are not “my” policies. They are council policies, drawn up by professional officers, recruited for their various expertise, and approved by numerous Members with diverse experiences.
Our officers are part of the harbour users group discussions. What is surprising is that when the Executive Committee discussed the £1.8m repair that Mr Roberts objects to, although we had moved the meeting in public to Scarborough Town Hall, only one person came to speak about the proposal. And that was a local Member, speaking strongly in favour.
However I am always happy to engage with our residents, including Bob Roberts, but I learnt throughout my business life that engagement is always more successful when it is respectful.
So I make no apology again in saying I was delighted to see the Countryfile programme last Sunday on the Wensleydale Railway. Another tourism tint, but like its bigger companion, the NY Moors Railway, it is also an employer, a purchaser of local products and services, and a key investor in the local economy.
I was pleased to offer business support to the railway by providing, mainly, free meeting facilities and the use of one of our overflow car parks to facilitate a Park & Ride operation. I was even more pleased when I was invited to join the management board to help with commercial activities.
For some years I was able to provide cashflow to their retail activities at Leeming Bar. The essential challenge for all heritage lines is that by necessity their business is founded on aged equipment and infrastructure, in all likelihood not designed to have working lives well over a hundred years, and because of their insignificance in strategic terms, highly likely to have suffered a lack of non-essential maintenance in the last fifty.
So all credit to the many willing volunteers who are hugely generous not only with their time but also their wallets. The railway couldn’t exist without them and the BBC did a very good job in featuring what sterling work they have done. It's been a while since I left the board, so it has prompted me to visit again and I hope it encourages many more to do so too. I might write about them in more detail in the future.
Spare a thought for the chairman of our council, Councillor George Jabbour, as he undertakes the Coast to Coast Walk, soon to be universally recognised as a national trail. He is doing this partly for the satisfaction – I empathise as with colleagues I did the Lyke Wake Walk over the North York Moors when still at school. That was but 42 miles (but had to be done within 24 hours to get the certificate and tie), George’s walk is 192 miles but with no time limit. In fact he is doing it in stages, dropping off occasionally to attend to civic duties. He is using the recently launched Coast to Coast official passport, the brilliant scheme that helps walkers find convenient stopovers en route, together with a permanent and validated record of where they have been.
He is also making use of the service that carries your luggage from one overnight stop to the next, another brilliant scheme. He’s walking on his own but I think he’s hoping that when he gets to North Yorkshire some of his fellow councillors, certainly the ones whose divisions the route goes through, will turn out to join him. I’m looking forward to him talking me through the passport stamps when he’s finished, especially those in North Yorkshire.
The other reason he is doing it is to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, that excellent organisation that so often rescues those in serious medical difficulties in remote and other areas and can often be the difference between life and death. Frequently seen in our skies, it relies totally on donated funds, like those that George will raise doing his walk.
Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.