Sorry, but landscapes are better without barriers

From the moment I arrived in Bakewell, Derbyshire, as a carpet-bagger politician nearly a quarter of a century ago, I knew I’d never leave. The attractions of the county and its sweet green hills and dales only grew. And in the end, though I had meant the Peaks to be just rungs on my ladder to the peaks of politics, politics turned out to be just a rung on my ladder to the Peaks. Here I stayed and here, I hope, I always will.

So what comes next is difficult to write: so difficult that I’ve never written it before. But here goes…

I don’t like dry-stone walls.

There. I’ve said it. I don’t actually like the very thing so many tourists and residents love best and associate most with our glorious Peak District National Park. Dry-stone walls are in all the postcards: part of the brand. But given my way I’d bulldoze the lot.

In admitting this I feel rather like that polar bear cub in the joke (its punchline too vulgar to print), who didn’t like the cold. Or Noël Coward’s Nina, from Argentina, who hated dancing…

She declined to Begin The Beguine when they besought her to, And with language profane and obscene she cursed the man who taught her to. She cursed Cole Porter too.

At once I scramble to rescue my friendship with the brilliant dry-stone waller who has built for my partner and me the outstanding new gritstone wall that lines one side of our little lane and keeps the llamas in. Mr Cooper’s wall is a work of art. I cannot fault it. Nor do I wish to hurt the feelings of my two Catalan friends, also wallers, who have so expertly rebuilt the gritstone wall that separates the llamas’ field from the wood above it.