I know that erosion in the Lakes is a realy difficult issue and, yes, I do contribute to it!

But is it just me worried about the approach of "Fix the Fells"? I am getting the impression that quite a lot of its repair work is on paths where it is not really necessary, where erosion was not that bad and, indeed, it sometimes appears to be more to make the path "easier" rather than for any decent reason. Further some of its work, especially that which makes the dreadful stone stair cases on everything from Loughrigg to the Langdales and Helvellyn, are dire - often pitched with rock sloping slightly down slope, and done so badly they make the path far more dangerous, especially in wet or ice, than the original loose rock they are replacing. So how does this orgnaisation decide which paths to "fix", how can it be influenced, who is it accountable to and so on? Is it just me who is starting to resent its work so much and feels that, perhaps with some of the larger grants it now receives eg from the Lottery, that it might have too much cash and so is not being discerning enough in its prioritisation?

We ran a feature on Fix the Fells recently alongside a critical piece by Lakeland climber Bill Birkett. There certainly appears to be growing concern that some of the paths that are being re-built/maintained are too much like country park paths rather than mountain paths so it's hard then to be critical of paths that are roughly made. Fix the Fells is trying to walk a very thin line between making the paths relatively safe but not sanitise them, a hard thing to do. I have some experience of footpath work on Ben Nevis and I know from that experience that you can't please everyone all the time. Sadly the other option, just to leave the paths to becoming badly overused and eroded, isn't really an option at all. As long as 150,000 people a year want to walk up Ben Nevis or the tens of thousands want to walk the Lake District fells we are going to need people to repair and maintain the footpaths. In some ways it's the price of the popularity of these areas.

Hi David. There was a lengthy response to that "Big Debate" with Bill Birkett in the TGO Forum if you want to take a look. Copy and paste:

http://forum.tgomagazine.co.uk/forum/viewThread.html?threadID=868

(sorry for some reason the link feature isn't working.)

The discussion on paths begins at the bottom of page 1 of the thread then gets going from p.2