The bank holiday and half term week — coupled with some of the hottest days of the year — meant that the Lake District experienced a large influx of visitors.
That brought a welcome boost in trade to cafes, coffee shops, restaurants and retail outlets, who are keen to make up on lost business due to the pandemic.
But there have been reported problems with littering in the southern lakes area.
Ruth Kirk, the landscape engagement officer at Friends of the Lake District, said with more people holidaying in, and visiting, the Lake District, due to Covid restrictions, there had been a huge rise in littering and ‘fly camping’, which was putting enormous pressure on local communities and organisations which look after the area.
As she rightly pointed out, littering not only looks horrible, but is also damaging to wildlife and polluting to the area’s lakes and rivers.
Cllr Andrew Jarvis said South Lakeland District Council had put on additional services to collect rubbish and clean up litter and employed ‘Covid marshals’ to patrol the area.
He thanked all the volunteers who were repeatedly working to clean up other people’s mess.
We should all be thankful to such selfless volunteers. For example, almost 800 litter pickers took part in this year’s Great Cumbrian Litter Pick, which was held last month.
Seventy five groups, including Hawkshead Primary School, Lake District Diving and the Lakes Plastic Collective, filled more than 500 bags with rubbish at locations including the Helm in Kendal and Windermere.
The annual event was organised by Friends of the Lake District. Ruth Kirk said while the event took place over two days, many of those who took part went out with litter pickers and bags, day in and day out.
The public-spirited nature of all the volunteer litter pickers in our area is to be highly commended.
They are doing fantastic work to help protect our stunning landscape and environment.
Now everyone — whether they are visiting or live here — needs to show the same sense of community spirit so that littering is avoided in the first place.