ABSTRACT
In 1951, the first national park in the UK was designated. It is located in the Peak District, close to the middle of England. Its purpose was clear: conservation and popular recreation for peace and quiet. Its area included not only hill farming as well as some more lowland agricultural tracts, but small-scale industries and some nationally significant industries – limestone-quarrying – a peculiarly English national park. At that time these components were containable through the frameworks and powers of the park and the constituent, if several, local councils. Since that time the complexities of all these uses have increased significantly. This chapter includes a brief background of the park’s response to popular access, and acknowledges the growing and changing demands for use. It focuses upon different dimensions of the current tourist/visitor debate and a consideration of the current complexity of interests involved, as stakeholders, in the park. This chapter exemplifies the considerable complexity and challenges that the park as a whole seeks to cope with. First, however, a review of the background debate of what makes the park so magnetic an attraction, in a section called Embedding the Peak.
