The National Trust: one small step for man, one giant car park for mankind.

[Jdsk]

I've written to Cycling UK to ask if they have any liaison with the NT.

Jonathan

[mattheus]

Park and Ride might work in some places, but where would the "park" bit of that be? There would still have to be a car park somewhere.

Solutions have often been found for one off events e.g. shuttle buses from nearest station to festival sites.
Or - thinking of more general cases - you have a park-n-ride at the nearest conurbation, or motorway junction (which may already have Services). Places like Snowdon have adopted similar since the pandemic.

Either way, the visitor experience is more pleasant with less cars, and less car-park (once you get there ... )

Comparison with how the USA would do this:

Kansas.jpg (20.69 KiB) Viewed 1752 times

[PH]

I was at Trelissick at the weekend. My impression is that people don't use their cars to visit Trelissick but that they use Trelissick to provide them with somewhere to go in their cars.

I think that's exactly it, driving seems to be the No1 leisure activity and attractions are competing to be the place to drive too.
Be nice if cycling and public transport were given more consideration, I don't think it would make much difference. If you don't accommodate those driving to X attraction, they'll go somewhere else rather than change mode of transport.
I've visited Chatsworth House a few times (Not NT), it's well served by bus from Sheffield, Bakewell and Matlock, the bus is rarely half full and the car parks always look rammed.

[pwa]

I was at Trelissick at the weekend. My impression is that people don't use their cars to visit Trelissick but that they use Trelissick to provide them with somewhere to go in their cars.

I think that's exactly it, driving seems to be the No1 leisure activity and attractions are competing to be the place to drive too.
Be nice if cycling and public transport were given more consideration, I don't think it would make much difference. If you don't accommodate those driving to X attraction, they'll go somewhere else rather than change mode of transport.
I've visited Chatsworth House a few times (Not NT), it's well served by bus from Sheffield, Bakewell and Matlock, the bus is rarely half full and the car parks always look rammed.

I've been there myself in the car. All the picnic stuff in the boot. I doubt we would have bothered going if it had meant using public transport. But once there, the car was motionless for several hours while we walked around, ate and drank.

[mjr]

I doubt we would have bothered going if it had meant using public transport.

Why not? That seems the key question.

[mattheus]

I doubt we would have bothered going if it had meant using public transport.

Why not? That seems the key question.

In PWA's case, it seems they wanted a day out with their car!

[Carlton green]

Well, the National Trust are at it again:

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornw ... ns-7972956

That's doubling the car park size at the Trelissick estate in Cornwall to 600 cars. No mention of cycling, alternative ways of handllng the traffic and no mention either of the National Trust's own constant marketing and encouragement of visitor numbers.
AFAICS they are basically interested cash income and expansion. Most sites these days will have other other attractions as well to encourage visitors and keep the kids from getting bored. George Orwell would have had a field day with the Trust's own verbiage on how it protects places of ... blah, blah.

H’mm, seems the NT will be dammed whatever they do … which isn’t particularly helpful. The bottom line is that for such places to be preserved then the NT have to fill their coffers from what they can get by charging visitors, hence high visitor numbers coughing up a reasonable entrance fee is a necessary evil. Folk can and do drive significant distances to visit NT properties and, though I wish it were different, public transport is too poor to be a practicality for the vast majority of folk - assuming that there even is any public transport.

Cycling is great but less so if it takes two hours (cycling) to get there, and worse again when you’re moving children and or weak companion cyclists. Logistics matter and helping NT customers to become able to visit is important to the necessary income stream.

Stick and carrot? Well hitting motorist with some form of stick isn’t going to be good for business but rewarding folk who cycle will likely be well received by all. So asking the NT to provide good quality cycle sheds / covered storage and asking the NT to incentivise cycling by subsidised admission and / or free tea and cake would be good - just put some safeguards in place as otherwise the cafe rather than the property will be the cycle excursion destination .

[mattheus]

Stick and carrot? Well hitting motorist with some form of stick isn’t going to be good for business but rewarding folk who cycle will likely be well received by all. So asking the NT to provide good quality cycle sheds / covered storage and asking the NT to incentivise cycling by subsidised admission and / or free tea and cake would be good - just put some safeguards in place as otherwise the cafe rather than the property will be the cycle excursion destination .

Do you think that's not the case for those driving there??

(Carlton and others keep talking about profits, coffers, and the "real world"; don't forget that car-parking and driveways have considerable maintenance costs. )

The free cake etc promotions might just be a promotional phase .... maybe enough vistors come by bike to justify some infrastructure ... thus attrating more visitors by bike ... etc Families do just go for a ride in areas that NT own properties, even without a destination.

[Nearholmer]

otherwise the cafe rather than the property will be the cycle excursion destination

And?

I frequently use NT cafes as pit-stops when out on rides, because they tend to be good quality, in very pleasant environments. I thereby contribute revenue, but impose no wear and tear on the historic properties, which sounds like a win for NT.

TBH, I don’t go to them on bike rides at the weekend, bank holidays etc, because they are usually super-busy at those times, whereas in the week they are pleasantly quiet.

[Carlton green]

otherwise the cafe rather than the property will be the cycle excursion destination

And?

I frequently use NT cafes as pit-stops when out on rides, because they tend to be good quality, in very pleasant environments. I thereby contribute revenue, but impose no wear and tear on the historic properties, which sounds like a win for NT.

TBH, I don’t go to them on bike rides at the weekend, bank holidays etc, because they are usually super-busy at those times, whereas in the week they are pleasantly quiet.

Well, if my original wording is reread, you will see that I mentioned: “subsidised admission and / or free tea and cake would be good”. I wouldn’t be beyond cycling somewhere for free tea and cake and particularly so if admission was free too, it’s not that hard to imagine groups of cyclists doing the same and the NT being well and truly out of pocket. Hence a check or two would be needed to prevent abuse. Of course I’d encourage people to use NT properties, but in a way that doesn’t leave the NT out of pocket.

[Nearholmer]

Sorry, missed the free cake bit …… which isn’t like me, I’d usually cotton-on to free cake pretty swiftly.

[pwa]

I doubt we would have bothered going if it had meant using public transport.

Why not? That seems the key question.

With kids, and probably having to make connections, the journey (20 miles or so as a rough guess) would have been a bit of a chore and we would have found something less hassle nearer to where we were staying. Nobody needs to visit places like that. We do it because it is a nice thing to do. If it stops being a nice thing to do we have other things we can do. We had been doing a lot of Peak District walking, and we might have just done more of that instead.

So the next question would be, does it matter if a significant proportion of visitors stop visiting these places?

[Nearholmer]

Interesting question that.

The NT has become a mass membership, mass visitor, mass spending organisation, conserving and managing a mass of places and a mass of things within them.

If visitor numbers significantly reduced, the whole thing would have to deflate a bit, and in the process fewer things/places would be conserved and managed. They might even have to sell-off the least treasured country house to a filthy-rich oligarch, a bit like the ones who built them in the first place.

My personal feeling is that maybe there are enough huge country houses in preservation and open to the public, so that the loss of a few might not actually be a National Tragedy, provided public access to the land was maintained .,,…. Maybe a representative selection of giant country houses is enough, and maybe we don’t need as many as there are now.

The same questions apply to something else I’m interested in: old steam railways. The model there is similar, and the sector has blossomed since the 1960s just as the NT has, to the point where there now aren’t enough volunteers to go round, and lines are in some cases struggling to survive against a tide of rising costs.

But, in both cases, a slightly different visitor model, going back a bit to maybe the 1970s, could sustain things while reducing the environmental impact of travel to and from them: ‘bus outings.

The model of a community group, club, or whatever hiring a ‘bus, and/or ‘bus companies running very intense programmes of excursions seems to have contracted over the years, and could be revived. I seem to remember that one used to see a line of coaches parked at these places each day, whereas now on a visit one barely sees any.

[Carlton green]

Interesting thought that, coach excursions. Coaches trips like that are now a rarity but as a child they were an event. Why though would anyone want to use a coach when, as they do now, they have their own transport? There are reasons for wanting to use a coach but limited ones, IMHO.

Come the time when, for whatever reason, we can’t drive then coach travel could again become attractive - well better than the alternatives. In the meantime I see few coach parks in any of the places that I visit and remember coach journeys being a bit of a trial rather than a joy.

[mattheus]

Interesting thought that, coach excursions. Coaches trips like that are now a rarity but as a child they were an event. Why though would anyone want to use a coach when, as they do now, they have their own transport? There are reasons for wanting to use a coach but limited ones, IMHO.

They were popular backintheday due to cost (I also suspect people are less tolerant of other travellers these days, but it's probably a chicken/egg thing).

Recent governments have made private motoring highly affordable, with public transport lagging behind [and our taxes paying for the disparity, mainly]. Imagine if the current £2 bus fares were extended to private coach hire schemes e.g. to NT properties?!?


All these things can be changed. They are all the result of choices - by individuals, councils, government etc ...