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Those years in which I fail to spend at least one night in the Helford River seem incomplete. It is a piece of Heaven God left behind. At the other extreme, there is the sheer excitement of entering Acairseid Mor on South Rona next to Skye. Climb to the top of the island and one gets a huge panorama of the western highlands, and the Inner Sound looking over to Torridon and its forbidding, but grand, mountains. Of Acairseid Mor, William Cowper, wrote in 1895 in his book “Sailing Tours vol V” “This is a harbour to be attempted only by those who have failed to get wrecked elsewhere”. It is certainly an interesting entrance! These outer islands are protected by the sheer difficulty of getting there. Additionally, Acairseid Mor has been bought by a Danish lady who is seeking to restore its original condition. Sheep have been removed, some Highland cattle roam around; eagles nest in the crags. It is wild, raw beauty.
Of course we want these areas protected. In the case of Helford, the protection comes from the fact that the surrounding land is owned by about six people who value the place and protect it. I even have a sneaking suspicion that if you want to buy a cottage in Helford, there will be a meeting of the elders to determine whether or not you are ‘suitable’! Let a local council loose, and it would gradually be chipped away. Beaulieu is much the same. It is technically not a harbour, being totally privately owned. If it had not been, it might by now be wall to wall marinas and boatyards like Lymington or Hamble.
But we are not the only people who seek protection.
There are local protection groups, councils wanting to promote tourism, historians and palaeontologists, walkers, surfers, geologists, and a host of ecological bodies, local, national and international. All of them want bits of coast ‘designated’ so that their special interests are protected. In a report for government trying to identify the best “Marine Environmental High Risk Areas” proposed by Lord Donaldson of Lymington, all these designations were brought together. The maps show that one or more of the 44 different types of designation covers virtually every bit of coast!
The designations vary from those set up by voluntary bodies, some of whom are prepared to buy land in order to gain control, through national statutory designations, to designations required by EU Directives and international conventions. Every one of them has Objectives; many have a Management Plan (or an Action Plan or a Strategy); and some have statutory powers. All, in their different ways seek to limit what we can do on the water, especially close to the coast.
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