Reflections and Futures - Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues - page 250

Scale, as discussed in Chapter 1, involves linear resources that range from
small to large - small as in pathways within a visitor attraction (e.g. open-air
museum or botanical garden) or a walking themed trail in a town or city;
medium as in either long-distance walking trails or regional and national car-
based touring byways connected by a specific natural, historical or cultural
theme; and finally large (often known as mega-trails and routes), passing
through more than one region or country and often linked to past migration
or trade routes. Coupled with this is the reality that the setting may vary from
urban areas, a common locale for themed walking trails, to peri-urban loca-
tions with greenways and rail-trail corridors, to rural environments involving
themed touring routes or long-distance walking trails; and finally peripheral/
wilderness locations as contexts for remote nature trails and hiking tracks. We
have also suggested that for some people these linear spaces can have a direct
or indirect link to their past, to memories and senses of nostalgia, to the extent
to which they have a personal connection to the place and its attractions.
Supply and demand
While it is clear that other linear spaces exist, we have devoted most
attention in this topic to cultural heritage routes, nature trails and mixed
routes. This threefold view was deliberate because the majority of written
discourse has focused on these same classes of linear spaces. As noted in the
previous chapter, cultural routes have been developed for a variety of reasons,
and these were elaborated on at length to include enjoyment, preservation,
image of place enhancement, economic development and as instruments of
power and persuasion. What is perhaps more useful for researchers to build
on is the conceptual model developed with respect to cultural heritage trails,
stressing the difference between routes that have organically evolved
(e.g. those involving trade, migration, pilgrimage, as well as intentionally
built linear resources such as railways, canals and relict political boundaries)
and those that have been purposively designed for tourism and leisure
(e.g. trails devoted to urban heritage, film, art, music, literature, industrial arch-
aeology, agriculture, food and wine, and religion). In the case of organically
evolved routes we stress an evolution from 'original' route to 'developed' route.
In contrast, purposive routes, we argue, have come about due to the presence of
a certain theme within a defined linear space, around which a route was delib-
erately 'designed' (see Ramsay & Truscott, 2003). The topic offers detailed
examples of both organic and purposive cultural routes. The extent to which
the conceptual models developed (see Chapter 2) fit with the many examples
presented is perhaps an avenue for future research, as the models are viewed as
abstractions of reality as opposed to deliberately fitting within the specific con-
ditions for each cultural route.
On the supply side we also examined nature trails and mixed routes, the
latter emerging given the difficulty of separating culture and nature within