Tourists are a mixed blessing
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THE GOVERNMENT'S new spur to tourism may well benefit coach operators but may not please everyone, particularly those who believe that this small island is already sinking under the weight of tourists. Hugo Perks, chairman of the working party on tourism of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, drew the attention of the Royal Society of Arts last March to the damage being done to the environment by visitors.
He was not referring so much to litter or vandalism as to the wear and tear inevitable "if you send several coach loads of visitors to a stretch of coast line every weekend throughout the summer." He was particularly concerned about the overloading of the West Country, which had some 15m visitors in 1979. It was, he said, imperative that the promotion of it and similar areas by public bodies should cease at once.
If coach operators feel guilty about their and their passengers' activities, Hugo Perks may have a crumb of comfort for them. He recalled a walk between two Scottish highland villages "where the roadside was littered with empty whisky bottles which had been thrown out of the windows of passing cars belonging to locals." Coach passengers would, of course, have tossed out beer bottles.