Tranquillity 2

The original campaigners for National Parks envisaged protected areas where rural beauty, attractive landscapes and peaceful surroundings would be guaranteed at a time when urban environments were becoming more hectic and noisy. But today our National Parks authorities are continually giving way to the demands of those whose self interest erodes these values. In the Peak District quarrying continues to undermine the spirit of the area not just at the site of the operations but on the roads leading out from the workplace to the motorway network. Quarry trucks, larger and more of them than ever before, are rarely absent from the A625 Hathersage Road alongside Blacka Moor. Sometimes the noise from them, even early in the morning, compares to what you would have heard at a motorway interchange 20 years ago. Any complaints are met with the defence that the economy and jobs must always come first. It's difficult to resist the conclusion sometimes that the trade offs and compromises in the planning arguments indicate a failure of nerve on the part of the guardians of the Peak.

It's not good enough just to be able to say that the countryside should be just a bit less noisy than the city.