Dartmoor is basically a huge granite batholith that over thousands of years the soil on top of it has eroded and left a large area of uncovered granite, which we know today as Dartmoor.
National Parks. A national park is an area of land that has been taken over by the government and protected so that it cannot be built on or destroyed. This is because of its natural beauty or historical sites that are to be preserved. Dartmoor became a national park 50 years ago and is still being protected today. There are certain areas on Dartmoor that have been allowed to be built on. These are only allowed for mining and farmers etc. but are not allowed to be expanded without special permission.
To answer this section of coursework I will divide it up into the key questions.
1. Is Norsworthy Bridge a honeypot?
It is too early to say if it is a honey pot or not but the evidence shown above shows that Norsworthy Bridge has great natural beauty.
Norsworthy Bridge is not really a historical site but still has an old house. However this is probably not what the visitors go to see.
To help me decide if Norsworthy Bridge is a honeypot I did a visitor survey. This survey is not very accurate as it was raining on the day of the fieldtrip.
VISITOR SURVEY
Date: 29/6/01 Time: 11:00 – 14:30 Weather: Raining
2. What type of honeypot is it?
As you can probably tell from the pictures above, if Norsworthy Bridge is a honeypot then it would more likely be a site of natural beauty than historical buildings. There is only one building at Norsworthy Bridge and isn’t very noticeable. There are many footpaths going through woods and open country filled with wild flowers, trees and animals.
3. What conflicts are there and what impact the visitors have?
CONFLICT MATRIX
X=No conflict
?=Unsure
=Conflict
1-5=Scale of conflict
To see what impact the visitors have I walked up four footpaths and made notes on erosion, litter and how well managed that area is.
Figs, 2, 3, 4 and 5 is the data that I collected.
As I walked along the path I stopped every 10-15 metres to collect the data. I made notes on impact and how it has been managed. Then I gave it an overall score out of five. Five being the worst and one being the best managed and has the least impact.
IMPACT SURVEY Location: Norsworthy Bridge
Fig.2
Fig.3
Fig.4
Fig.5
From this data I can tell that if the land near Norsworthy Bridge were used for artillery it would cause havoc with all of the other visitors. However, at present there seems not to be any major conflict between visitors, only minor ones.
As you can see from the impact surveys most of the footpaths were ok. They were signposted and well managed with not too much erosion, it was only in a few places that it was poorly maintained and eroded.
4. How is Norsworthy Bridge managed to reduce visitor impact but allow its continuing use? (Is it well managed?)
Norsworthy Bridge has a number of stiles leading to footpaths. All are signposted well and well maintained so they stay strong and stable.
At Norsworthy Bridge the management have cut down trees to thin out the woods. However they haven’t just left the logs lying anywhere, they stacked them up along the sides of the footpaths. This is good because clearing the trees creates places for people to walk and stacking them neatly prevents people from tripping on them.
As you can see from this photo most places at Norsworthy Bridge are signposted. This is helpful, as you could easily get lost in the network of footpaths.
At Norsworthy Bridge there are a number of footpaths but each one has its own symbol so you don’t stray off onto other paths.
5. How can it be managed in the future?
As I was walking around Norsworthy Bridge I noticed that there was quite a bit of litter and dog mess. To reduce these problems there could be a few bins and doggy bins for people to place their waste in. The bins should be placed in positions so that they can be seen but without spoiling the views of scenes of natural beauty.
I have come to the conclusion that Norsworthy Bridge is a honeypot because even though the weather was rainy there were still quite a few people there. Along with its many visitors and its natural beauty Norsworthy Bridge hasn’t much to offer in the way of toilets, information centres etc. although in nice weather there are probably a few ice cream vans positioned around the area.
Picnic sites: Although there are no designated picnic sites there are open or cleared areas of land where you could have a picnic.
To improve the majority of my results I could have returned to the area on a sunnier day, when there would be more people. This would help because I could do the visitor counts again and record more activities and their conflicts.
The resources that I used for this piece of coursework are:
- Encarta
- Internet
- Britannica encyclopedias
