A woman has hit out at the ‘’utter stupidity’’ of young tourists who drove two cars along a narrow off-road gravel path.
Walker Jean Connell had left the Keswick to Threlkeld path to hike up a steep slope when a Seat Ibiza car with two young women in it suddenly appeared on the path she was on.
The women spoke to a “gobsmacked” Mrs Connell and said they had come the wrong way down the path on the lower slopes of Latrigg and they were going to turn round.
“If they had gone down the track that I had just come up, they would never have got their car back out,” said Mrs Connell.
But this car was then followed by a Mini driven by a young man with a female passenger. Mrs Connell walked on before taking a photograph of the Mini, at which point the man, in his mid-20s, got out and asked: “Is there a problem?’’
“I said ‘Yes. it is not a road’,’’ said Mrs Connell.
The man then began shouting at her and as Mrs Connell continued on her walk, he began to reverse his vehicle along the windy and undulating path.
He wound down his window and accused Mrs Connell of being unhelpful and said she could have told them where the car park was to enable them to get onto the fell.
“You see all the photos of people visiting the Lake District leaving rubbish,’’ said Mrs Connell. ‘
’Well this is another form of stupidity with them saying: ‘Oh we will drive down there, it might take us somewhere’.
“They could have ended up in a position that is quite dangerous.
“To take the car another couple of 100 metres past a place where they could have parked was just utter stupidity.
“Those girls could have ended up out of pocket with their car if they had got it stuck on the steep slope. On the one hand this is about locals saying: ‘Look at the stupid tourists,’ but there is a safety message as well.”
