During the first lockdown, farmer James Rebanks was astonished by a visitor-free Lake District. Ahead of a super-season of domestic tourism, he wonders if there’s a better way
Last March, I stood in the middle of the A66 between Penrith and Keswick and gawped at what had become a ghost road. It is one of the main routes in and out of the Lake District, where I’ve lived all my life, and usually roars with traffic. But there wasn’t a vehicle for miles. I just stared, stunned by the silence. The sun was shining in a deep-blue sky, the birds were singing, but it felt apocalyptic, as if I were the only person left in the world.
In those first weeks of lockdown, the whole landscape came to seem radically different. The shores of the lakes were abandoned, even on sunny days; the car parks were empty; the footpaths and fells silent. It felt wrong to enjoy this time that was terrible for so many people, but, in truth, many of us did. The 19 million visitors a year to the Lakes are an accepted fact of our day-to-day lives, and I never imagined they would not be here. Now I could see what it might be like to live without them all around us, something perhaps a lot of rural people had long wanted.
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