The National Trust

The National Trust is -rightly -in hot water over out bidding local hill farmers in the Lake District in order to add to its enormous landholding.  I have long had my doubts about the National Trust's (of which I am a member) Empire building ambitions.  This is yet another incidence -of which their have been too many in recent years - of the National Trust spending large sums of members money to buy land over which there is no conceivable risk from development now or in the future.  So what is the reason behind buying it? what conceivable benefit to the general public and their membership will result from the purchase? Absolutely nothing.

The National Trust should stop buying up vast areas of protected coast line and mountain and fell for no benefit and instead concentrate their resources on buying up areas which may be threatened with development or areas already developed which are such eyesores that they blight great areas.

So the other day - walking the coast path between Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton in Devon -along a lovely unspoilt stretch of coast unspoilt- incidentally - mainly because it is owned not by the National Trust but by a Private estate - The Clinton Devon Estate - there was one blot on an otherwise idyllic walk.  A vast caravan park covering - at a guess -fifty acres.  This excrescence did not just blight the fifty acres but the coast line for several miles in either direction. How much better spent would the National Trust millions be on buying up such gross blots on the landscape and returning them to verdant countryside rather than wasting money on buying protected mountains and fell.