In reply to Michael Hood:
> The amount of "trees down" damage caused by storm Arwen was truly phenomenal
No argument with that
>difficult to appreciate unless you've tried to pass through an affected area.
That's one thing that's puzzled me. At some point last summer I cycled along the road (I think it was allowed at the time) on my road bike, going round the "gates" without needing to dismount.
> From what I saw in the forest on the west side of Windermere (which is presumably similar in much of the forested areas of the lakes), it's never single trees down, more like a whole area where someone's played dominoes.
There are areas like that but they didn't seem to affect the road. I was surprised when I tried to cycle along the road again in November. By this time in addition to the gates 8' fence had been erected. Some people who had evaded the fences said there were now several large trees that had been felled and left across the road. I appreciate they will have been deemed dangerous, but that is now the case for 20% of roadside Ash trees in Cumbria, can't see anyone getting away with closing even a minor road for more than a few days never mind years to sort this out.
>Really tricky to get through, especially since you can't tell how far the fallen tangle that you're trying to climb through goes on for. Must be a complete bitch to clear up.
Again, I can appreciate this is probably considerably more difficult than harvesting a healthy forest, but given the access tracks they have built to access these areas I'm not sure why the road has to remain closed.
> Having said that, it does appear that reinstating access to the public down the west side of Thirlmere is rather low in UUs priorities.
I think the initial request was for the closure to last 12 months, I thought that was taking the p*ss a bit.