Lake District
Recent

The narrow roads present a challenge for traffic flow, and since the 1960s certain areas have been very congested. This problem continues, with traffic congestion and parking problems in the towns and villages. Bowness-on-Windermere addressed the parking issue with a new car park at the edge of the community and by extending an existing car park. The Lake District NP publishes a list and map of car parks within its area, allowing tourists to plan their visits accordingly.

Whilst the roads and railways provided easier access to the area, many people were drawn to Lakeland by the publication of the Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells by Alfred Wainwright. First published between 1955 and 1966, these books provided detailed information on 214 fells across the region, with carefully hand-drawn maps and panoramas, and also stories and asides which add to the colour of the area. They are still used by many visitors to the area as guides for walking excursions, with the ultimate goal of bagging the complete list of Wainwrights. The famous guides were revised by Chris Jesty between 2005 and 2009 to reflect changes, mainly in valley access and paths, and are currently being revised by Clive Hutchby, the author of The Wainwright Companion. The first of the revised volumes, Book One: The Eastern Fells, was published in March 2015; the most recent, Book Six: The North Western Fells, was published in April 2019.

Since the early 1960s, the National Park Authority has employed rangers to help cope with increasing tourism and development, the first being John Wyatt, who has since written several guide books. He was joined two years later by a second, and since then the number of rangers has been rising.

The area has also become associated with the writer Beatrix Potter. Several tourists visit to see her family home, with particularly large numbers coming from Japan.

Tourism has now become the park's major industry, with about 12 million visitors each year, mainly from the rest of the UK and from China, Japan, Spain, Germany, and the US. Windermere Lake Steamers are Cumbria's most popular charging tourist attraction, with about 1.35 million paying passengers each year, and the local economy is dependent upon tourists. The negative impact of tourism has been seen, however. Soil erosion, caused by walking, is now a significant problem, with millions of pounds being spent to protect overused paths. In 2006, two tourist information centres in the National Park were closed.

Cycling is now popular in the Lake District National Park. A number of long-distance cycle routes go through the Lake District, including coast to coast cycle routes such as the C2C, Hadrian's Cycleway, the Reivers Route and the Walney to Wear route. Several towns have also become hubs for road-cycling holidays and cycle touring, such as Keswick and Ambleside. Mountain bikers use the trails constructed at Whinlatter Forest and Grizedale Forest and also have wilder routes available on bridleways.

Cultural tourism is becoming an increasingly important part of the wider tourist industry. The Lake District's links with a wealth of artists and writers and its strong history of providing summer theatre performances in the old Blue Box of Century Theatre are strong attractions for visiting tourists. The tradition of theatre is carried on at venues such as Theatre by the Lake in Keswick with its summer season of six plays in repertoire, Christmas and Easter productions, and the many literature, film, mountaineering, jazz, and creative arts festivals, such as the Kendal Mountain Festival and the Keswick Mountain Festival. Two museums, The World of Beatrix Potter and Dove Cottage & The Wordsworth Museum, are also important aspects of the region.
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