Method, Data Interpretation and Evaluation for 'How Tourism Has Changed Hawkshead'

GCSE Geography

How Has Tourism Changed Hawkshead?

Aim 1

To investigate how land use in Hawkshead has changed

Aim 2

To discuss reasons why land use in hawkshead has changed

Aim 3

To find out if changes have damaged or benefited Hawkshead

Introduction

Hawkshead is located in the Lake District, in the North West of England. It is a small village, home to many retired or second homeowners. The village receives its main source of income through tourism. This becomes evident after spending even a short while in Hawkshead, as there are numerous amounts of Bed and Breakfasts located in and around the village. Tourists come to Hawkshead to admire the scenery, to take long walks or more generally they come to escape from their busy lives and relax for a weekend. Hawkshead is located on a rural hilly landscape (much of which is used for farming) and is an extremely beautiful part of England.

Here are some maps to show the location of Hawkshead, all maps are obtained from the website .

The first map shows the location of Hawkshead in the Lake District.

The second map shows the location of Hawkshead in the Northwest

The last map shows the location of Hawkshead in the United Kingdom

There are many forms of transport to reach Hawkshead, the most accessible are by car or ferry. To drive to Hawkshead from Southport it takes on average an hour and forty minutes, but depending on traffic it can differ. To drive from major cities such as Liverpool it takes around two hours and from Manchester it takes about one hour forty-five minutes. These times were obtained from the website routeplanner

Tourists visit Hawkshead for its beautiful scenery, quaint stone cottages and its general relaxed atmosphere. Most of the cottages were built in the 15th century, but have been updated and have received lots of necessary maintenance work since then.

One of the biggest changes that have affected Hawkshead is that it has become a national park. Hawkshead and the surrounding area of Hawkshead (the Lake District) is all part of a national park. The Lake District became a national park in 1951. This is because it was seen as a beautiful part of the countryside, and therefore needed to be protected to ensure that it would stay in the same condition, and would not be ruined as many other parts of the Britain have been. The Lake District has been put under the protection of the national park, so that the community and tourists alike can all visit the Lake District and enjoy the peace and quite along with the preserved natural beauty.

In recent years Hawkshead has been visited more often than ever, this is mainly due to the fact that more people have better jobs and a higher salary, which therefore means they can afford to go on more holidays, and better day trips. Also tourism has increased throughout the world as it has become easier and quicker to travel, think of the Euro Tunnel, which can get us to France in half an hour. This makes it much easier for tourists to get around and to visit places further away.

Methodology

I have used five different methods to investigate how tourism has changed Hawkshead. The first method I used was in the form of a questionnaire. This is a primary data collection technique. I used this method to find out what the residents of Hawkshead and the tourists that visited Hawkshead a number of times thought about the question ‘How Has Tourism Changed Hawkshead?’ I also used my questionnaire to see out of the twenty people I asked how many of them were tourists, by doing this we could then compare the amount of tourists with the amount of residents and see whether we asked more of one than the other. We used our questionnaire to obtain some primary data as it was an easy clear way of collecting detailed information about people’s views of Hawkshead.

Before going to Hawkshead, my group made up our own original question to ask in our questionnaire, it was; do you feel Hawkshead has changed since your last visit? We chose this question to find out about tourists opinions, but most of the tourists we asked had not been to Hawkshead before and therefore could not answer this specific question, if we were to repeat this investigation we would choose a question that could be answered by everyone and would therefore give us more data to work from. We also tried to survey different age groups but most of the people walking around seemed to be around the same age.

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When we were in Hawkshead carrying out our questionnaire we stood by a fairly busy street so we would have enough people to ask our questions to. Some people in my group suggested standing outside the tourist information centre, but we realised this would make are results bias as we would questionnaire more tourists than homeowners and as a results not obtain a good range of data. We spoke to 4 residents, 2 second home owners and 14 tourists and asked them our questions. We asked anyone as we wanted to obtain fair data and instead of asking all the ...

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For a tiny quiet village experiencing some very wet weather it was surprising how many people were actually out walking along the streets, the rain was not putting people off going out, as proof, you could witness the many tourists clad in brightly coloured plastic anoraks walking along in the rain seeming to quite enjoy being outside in the bad weather. We completed are questionnaire around 11:30, as people were making there way out to eat lunch, and for that reason it was quite busy when are questionnaires were completed.

These are the questions I asked in my questionnaire, for each question I will explain why we used them and what the possible answers obtained could tell us:

Are you a tourist, resident or second home owner? I asked this question so I would be able to see out of the 20 people I questioned how many of them were tourists, if there were a lot of tourists compared to residents and second home owners this would tell us that generally more tourists visit the village than people that have homes near it.

(Questions 2, 3, 4 and 5 only apply to tourists.)

Please name your home town. By asking the tourists to name there home town we are able to see the range of places people have travelled from and how far people are willing to travel.
How long is your stay in Hawkshead? I asked this so we would be able to find out what the how long people usually stayed for.
How did you travel to Hawkshead today? By asking this we could find the most popular mode of transport used to get to Hawkshead. From this we would be able to investigate further things such as do tourists pollute Hawkshead by travelling by car rather than on public transport.
What do you find attractive about Hawkshead? I asked this to find out what Hawkshead’s best assets are, and to understand more what people travel to Hawkshead for.

(Questions 7 and 8 only apply to home owners)

6. How long have you lived in Hawkshead? By asking this question we can discover whether most residents are new to Hawkshead or have lived there all there lives. This would show whether Hawkshead has become more popular over the years.

7. In your opinion what effect do tourists have on Hawkshead? This question was asked so we could receive residents views on the positive or negative things the tourists bring to Hawkshead, this would show us whether the residents were in favour of tourists visiting Hawkshead.

(Lastly are group created our own question which was ;)

8. Do you feel that Hawkshead has changed since your first visit? We asked this to see whether people could recognise the changes that tourism may have created.

My second technique was to carry out a landscape evaluation this shows whether certain characteristics of the village can benefit Hawkshead or not and it shows us whether the fact that tourists visit Hawkshead effects the overall look of the village. This technique is also primary as we are collecting the data first hand. For this landscape evaluation we surveyed three different places; the car park, the centre of the village, and the bypass road that goes around the village. We looked at the different factors below and gave them a score from + 4 to -4.

1. The attractiveness of the buildings

2. The car park facilities available

3. Toilet availability

4. The pedestrianised village centre

5. The well kept gardens and hanging baskets

6. The shops for tourists

7. The shops for locals

8. The narrow pavements

9. The coach parking facilities

10. The cost of parking

11. The bypass around the village

12. Whether the modern buildings fit in with the rest of the village

The advantage of using this method is we are evaluating each part of the village, using a scoring system makes it easy for people to understand and shows the results clearly. The disadvantage is the information is based on my opinion and therefore is subjective to other people’s views and opinions. The information we collected from this enquiry is useful as we can clearly see the things that have been affected more than others as a result of tourism.

The third technique I used was a land use survey. We were provided with a map of Hawkshead and had to shade in the different functions of the buildings, we used a colour key to do this. This technique is a primary data collection. The main advantage of this technique is it is really clear to see what the functions of each buildings are. The disadvantage is it doesn’t give much information other than what the functions are. It would be better if we had an old land use survey from say 50 years ago so we could compare the amount of holiday homes and bed and breakfasts found on each map. This would show us whether tourism had increased or not.

My fourth technique was a building transect, although this was a time consuming enquiry I think this is a good way to collect evidence that houses in the village have changed or been restored. We walked from south to north through the village noting down whether the houses were modern (after 1945) or old (before 1945) and what the obvious changes on each houses were. We did this for 25 houses. We only chose to do a transect of the village rather than the all of it as we wanted to concentrate on the main street were most of the tourists where, and were the main shops could be found, also we wouldn’t of had enough time to evaluate the whole village. This again is a primary data collection as we collected the information ourselves. This information is not subjective as it is based on facts, if the house is newer than 1945 it is therefore modern, this is a fact.

At first it was difficult in some cases to know whether the houses were old or modern but as we surveyed more and more it became easier to know what to look for, e.g. if the guttering was U.P.V.C it would tell us the house was modern or had been updated, if the lintels on the windows were stone it would mean the house was old, we also looked at the changes that had occurred on purpose to increase the look of the property such as hanging baskets and outdoor lights this could be to make the village look better for tourists.

This tells us the specific things that have changed about Hawkshead, and from this we can decide whether some of these changes have been an effect of tourism such as some of the new buildings were public toilets, they were most likely built to cater for the tourists needs, also in the village there is a tourist information centre, this was built specifically for the tourists. We can also understand whether the changes have damaged or benefited Hawkshead, by looking at what the changes are, e.g. if the function of the buildings have changed. One of the buildings we looked at had been changed into a bed and breakfast, the outside of the building was still in keeping with the theme of the village, but instead of staying as a house, the person running the bed and breakfast was taking advantage of the growth of tourism and was earning money from it without damaging the look of the building in any way. This is a good example of why Hawkshead benefits from tourism; as it keeps the local economy going.

The fifth technique I used was my own original idea; I decided to look at how many bed and breakfasts, hotels etc. could be found in Hawkshead. By doing this I am able to see how important tourists are to Hawksheads local economy then compare the amount of places that tourist can stay in Hawkshead with the amount of places there are to stay in Formby, a village slightly smaller that Hawkshead but with tourist attraction such as the beach and the red squirrel reserve. By doing this it would be evident whether Hawkshead was a good attraction for tourists by the amount of places there are to stay and if there were more places for people to stay in Hawkshead than Formby we would know that Hawkshead is a ‘tourist town.’ I have made a table to show my results. As I obtained my results from a website the data is secondary. It is not subjective as the data I acquired is factual.

These results were obtained from and www.touristnetuk.com

From these results it is evident that Hawkshead is a tourist town and they obviously have the need for so many places for tourists to stay, therefore you would say Hawkshead is a ‘tourist town’. Obviously the hotels and B&B’s etc. were never always used for this function. I would guess that most of these hotels etc. have been built purposefully for tourists or the buildings have changed there functions, to suit the needs of the tourists. As a result this shows me that tourism has changed Hawkshead, and therefore I can use this data to back up my enquiry.

Data Interpretation

In Hawkshead a lot of things have changed over the years. We are carrying out this investigation to find out whether most of these changes are due to tourists. This is what I found out from the information we collected.

We carried out a building transect, from this building transect I could see that only 4 of the 25 buildings we looked at were new (after 1945.) I also found out that the 24 buildings that were old (before 1945) had been changed a lot. Here are examples of some of the changes that were made; plastic guttering, satellite dish, velux windows, repainted brick walls, new slate on the roof and one of the main changes that were obvious in the buildings we looked at was that most of their functions had been changed e.g. a large house had been changed into a hotel.

There were also things in the village that made it obvious to see that things had been changed and updated. There were double yellow lines along the busy streets, which we know are put there to stop any parking along the designated areas. I think these are a new feature to the village and were probably put in place as more and more tourists started parking their cars along the streets. Also a car park has been created to compensate for the fact you are not allowed to park in the village, and to make a place for coaches to park.

The village also has public toilets located right next to the car park; again I think this is mainly for tourists as these would be unnecessary if Hawkshead didn’t receive many visitors or tourists.

We also carried out a land use survey, we labelled the pubs and restaurants, the buildings mainly for tourists, the shops, the hotels and B&B’s and the houses. We found that there were around 100 houses 2 shops and 2 pubs and restaurants, we also found that there were 6 buildings mainly for tourist plus the hotels and B&B’s which there were 18 of. So this means there were a round 1010 buildings that tourists probably wouldn’t use, and 24 buildings that tourists probably would use. 24 buildings for tourists in one small village is a big amount and shows us that tourist’s play a key part in Hawkshead’s economy.

Hawkshead is a slowly growing village with its population increasing steadily. More houses are being constructed on the edge of the village as the demand to live there is high. When we were in Hawkshead we didn’t see any houses for sale.

I think the reasons things are changing in Hawkshead is its increasing popularity with tourists. Also it is getting more popular for elderly retired couples to move to Hawkshead or to buy a second home there. People have more money then ever before and so travelling or buying second homes is becoming more popular as people have more money to spend and a wider choice of places to go as transport has also improved. As Hawkshead relies on tourists to feed the local economy the village has to change to suit their needs and to keep the flow of tourists coming.

This photo shows a Beatrix potter gallery located in the centre of Hawkshead. This is where Beatrix potter used to live, and now it is a gallery showing all of her original drawings and selling small ornaments based upon her drawings. This shop is purely for tourists and is one of Hawkshead’s biggest attractions.

Most of the people we interviewed were tourists but there were 3 second home owners and 4 residents that we also interviewed. This tells us that on the day we visited there were more tourists out, which is unusual as it was raining and it was on a week day. This just shows how popular Hawkshead is if people are willing to visit in the rain!

In Hawkshead there is a tourist information centre right next to the car park, which is good because as soon as tourists enter Hawkshead they can go straight to the tourist information centre and see what they can do in Hawkshead. This is only really useful to tourists as residents already know the activities available.

As the car park is so large in Hawkshead this suggests that they receive huge numbers of tourists in one day. This is probably most likely in summer on a bank holiday. All the evidence suggests that tourists benefit Hawkshead but there probably are damages such as paths being worn away and excess litter and traffic pollution but overall tourists don’t affect Hawkshead in a bad way.

All my interviewees were from the U.K but some came from as far as London so it is obvious that Hawkshead has a good reputation and people are willing to travel a long distance to visit it. This is good evidence to say that Hawkshead is a worth while place to visit. If you compare question 4 (how far did you travel to Hawkshead today?) with question 5 (what do you find most attractive about Hawkshead?) we can see that most people travel a long distance to find village charm and peace and quite.

In my landscape evaluation survey I gave the edge of the village and the centre of the village either 4 marks (greatly improves Hawkshead) 2 marks (improves Hawkshead) or 0 (does not affect Hawkshead) I did however say that the narrow effected Hawkshead little, as people had to walk on the road or squeeze past each other on the pavement, but if there were bigger pavements this would look odd and put of place so am I not sure about that one.

I completed my own original piece of work which was to compare the amount of lodgings in Hawkshead with the amount of lodgings in Formby. From this data I could see that Hawkshead was a much more popular tourist village than Formby as the amount of lodgings in Hawkshead was much greater than the amount in Formby. So my own original idea supports the other evaluations I produced in Hawkshead.

I think the aims of the Lake District national park have definitely been met. Hawkshead is a well managed and controlled part of the countryside. There are places that you can walk about with freedom and places that are being reserved for future generations to share the beauty of.

Data evaluation

I think my method was quite well thought out as all the results seemed to be accurate for the day we visited Hawkshead. I think that perhaps it would have been better to questionnaire more people as then the results would be more fair or maybe consider questioning the same amount of tourists as residents to compare their thoughts on Hawkshead, as then are results would be less bias. The results were probably affected quite a lot by the weather as it was raining at the time we carried out our investigation which means there would have been less people around and the village would have been less congested than usual.

To improve my experiment I think you would have to visit Hawkshead on a number of days such as a bank holiday as then you could find the average results, which would ensure that the experiment wasn’t bias. If I went to Hawkshead in the middle of winter there would perhaps not be as many people visiting as there would be in the middle of summer. To help us carry out the land use survey map we could have obtained one from the local library which would have been more accurate. We also could have got one from 50 years ago to compare whether the amount of buildings for tourists had increased.

I think the land use survey was the most useful data we collected as it shows the amount of buildings for tourists and this could easily be compared with past land use survey maps which would support our investigation even more as we could present a past map with our recent map and show that the amount of tourist buildings had increased.

We investigated how the land had changed in Hawkshead and discussed reasons it has changed and in conclusion our investigation has shown that tourists do not damage Hawkshead much but are a great benefit to its economy.