No stopping

Over-tourism again. A woman is complaining that while she was hiking in the Peak District in Derbyshire her parked car was damaged and she got a parking fine. She wanted to witness the sunrise, after seeing videos of the Mam Tor beauty spot on social media.

She was parked near a clearway sign that means no stopping. She assumed that because lots of cars were parked on the road she could do the same.

She admits parking near the clearway sign, but blames the road authorities for not building more car parks or adding extra road signs.

There are several responses to that. Firstly, she should have obeyed the road sign and not copied the other motorists. Secondly she should have realised that all the parked cars were narrowing the road and it was highly likely that her car could be damaged by a large vehicle. And thirdly, there are plenty of places to view a sunrise and she didn't need to drive to Derbyshire from her home town of Milton Keynes, a 250 mile round trip.

No wonder so many places are blighted by over-tourism if people don't have the common sense to go somewhere that's not already far too popular and plagued by thoughtless visitors.

There's no need for more car parks or extra road signs. What's needed is a bit more savvy about where you're planning to go and the havoc caused by hundreds of day trippers like you descending on the latest trendy beauty spot.

Jenny and I are fond of Castlerock, a seaside village on the north coast with a population of around 1160. Usually there's hardly anyone about and it's wonderfully quiet and peaceful. But everyone flocks to nearby Portrush, which in the summer is overflowing with visitors.

Nowt so queer as folk.

Pic: the summit of Mam Tor

Watch your language!

There's heated controversy in Northern Ireland over bilingual signs, especially road signs. Quite a lot of signs are bilingual already (English and Irish, that is), but any proposal to add to them is always contentious.

People can apply for signs to be made bilingual, and in 2023 there were over 600 such requests. In the past road signs could only be changed if two thirds of the road's residents asked for it, but the threshold in Belfast has now been cut to 15 per cent.

There are two opposing views on bilingual signs. One says that because most people here speak English, adding Irish is unnecessary and costly, and is just a pointless political gesture by Irish language campaigners.

The other viewpoint is that the Irish language needs to be supported and promoted and used more widely as it's an important part of Irish culture, and those opposing bilingual signs are just being narrow-minded and obstinate.

I must say I tend to support the unnecessary-and-costly argument. If people want to learn and promote Irish, fine, it's a wonderful language, but why bilingual road signs? If most people speak English I don't see the need for them.

If we can find our way around quite adequately with an English road sign, why add Irish?

The bilingual road sign issue came to mind because a Welsh language campaigner is currently embroiled in a three year legal battle after refusing to pay a £70 car park penalty notice written only in English. Toni Schiavone will only pay the penalty notice if it's translated into Welsh, and he says he's being unfairly harassed.

I'm keeping well out of the language controversy. Or as an Irish speaker would say "Tá mé ag éirí go maith as".