WHEN the weather’s this good you have to wonder why so many of us jet off to the Med and elsewhere for our summer holidays.
With cloudless skies and the thermometer consistently up in the seventies as it has been over the last month, there’s no better place to be than North Yorkshire and its two national parks.
Of course, this is the exception rather than the rule, but by all accounts our local tourism industry is making the most of what has so far been a glorious summer – making hay while the sun shines as the saying goes.
A couple of days ago I was delighted to hear from Highways England (HE) that the brown tourism signs from Richmond and Swaledale that I fought for will be erected next week on the A1(M) at Scotch Corner – just in time for the main holiday season.
You may recall the longstanding tourism signage for Richmond at the junction disappeared with the upgrading works and initially HE said it was not minded to replace it.
But with the support of Cllrs Yvonne Peacock and Carl Les, leaders of Richmondshire District and North Yorkshire County councils respectfully, I successfully argued that this was grossly unfair. The agency agreed to replace them at no cost to local taxpayers.
Signs might not seem that important but all three of us felt it is vital that the benefit of the £380m spent on the new road should be shared as widely as possible in the local community.
Welcome as it is that our tourism industry does well during the peak summer months, we need to spread the benefits tourism brings over the full year.
The seasonality of tourism does create some problems so anything we can do to bring visitors to our beautiful part of the world outside of the traditional holiday season is particularly valuable.
I know both our national parks are keen to encourage “out of season” visitors and I am working on an initiative which could bring many more visitors to the Yorkshire Dales earlier in the year.
In April 2017, I had the privilege of opening the salmon season on the River Ure which has seen spectacular improvement in stocks in recent years.
Thanks to improving water quality down-river in the Ouse and the work of the Ure Salmon Group in removing obstacles and creating spawning grounds, more and more salmon aremaking the journey from the sea to their birthplace in the upper reaches of the river system.
The Ure is improving so much that last year it was the 17th best salmon river out of 64 in the UK. Given that there were virtually no salmon in the river just a few years ago, that is an amazing recovery.
This, in turn, is attracting more and more salmon fishermen, who bring with them their families who use the many tourist-related businesses.
But there is just one problem. This great success story is being compromised by the short salmon fish season on the Ure.
Unlike almost all the other rivers where the season opens at the beginning of February, the Ure season doesn’t start until the beginning of April. That’s two whole months of lost business for hotels, pubs, B&Bs and other tourism enterprises in a quiet time of the year.
The evidence suggests extending the season would not jeopardise the recovering salmon population in the river and I have lobbied the chairman and chief executive of the Environment Agency (which sets the season) urging them to act on this. I am in active engagement with them and will report back as matters develop.