Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
geographers' analysis of tourism and recreational travel, seeking to model and understand
this phenomenon (Mansfield 1969; Colenutt 1970). As Patmore (1971) argued:
The crux of recreational planning is therefore the location, design and
management of a relatively limited number of sites devoted wholly or
partially to recreation, together with a concern for the routes which link
them both to each other and to the residences of the users.
(Patmore 1971:72)
For the coastal environment, it has been the mobility afforded by the car (Wall 1971,
1972) which has posed many of the resulting pressures, planning problems and conflicts
in environments that are constrained in the number of visitors they can absorb. Wall
(1971) recognised that holiday-makers generate a considerable proportion of the road
traffic in resorts. As Wall (1971) poignantly and ironically commented:
One of the major advantages of automobile travel is that it appears to be
quite cheap. The capital expenditure involved in the purchase of an
automobile is likely to be large, but having incurred this outlay, the cost of
additional increments of travel is comparatively small.
(Wall 1971:101)
The irony in 2005 is the £5 gallon of petrol in the UK, but this has not constrained the
recreational or tourist use of the car for pleasure travel. The car remains convenient and
flexible, and adds a degree of readily available mobility which is not constrained by
public transport timetables. Probably the greatest constraint for the car is in
accommodating the space demand in relation to recreational and tourist routeways in
coastal environments (i.e. parking space). There is also growing evidence from the public
sector of pressure in some coastal environments to exclude the car from certain areas.
The car may reduce what the geographer terms 'the friction of distance', making coastal
environments attractive and accessible to urban-dwellers. However, one has to place the
coastal environment in the wider recreational and tourist context of participation levels.
Patmore (1971:76-7) aptly summarised this issue where The nearest seaside or open
moorland may lure people from conurbations six times a year, while the local park is
used every day to exercise the dog'. This hierarchy of tourism and leisure resources can
often be overlooked.
Access to the coastal environment is a key term, though as Patmore (1971) argued it
was a relative term, since improvements in transport routes and technology may directly
change the nature of the access. The historical geographer's emphasis on the role of
railway companies in Victorian Britain has identified their function in developing major
visitor hinterlands for specific coastal resorts. Even some 150 years later, coastal resorts
still have a limited reliance upon the rail network as a source of visitors, although the car
is by far the most important mode of travel for recreational trips. The coastal environment
and the routeways developed along coastlines, with viewing areas and a network of
attractions, may also be a major recreational resource. For example, on the upper North
Island of New Zealand, the collaboration between regional tourism organisations (see
Page et al. 1999) created the Pacific Coastal Highway scenic drive. Not only did this
