Today, campaigners want to see better public transport in the hope it will encourage people to take the bus to popular visitor places like Malham instead of using their cars. The narrow country roads to the village can be jammed with cars and coaches in the summer months, while the glinting in the sunlight of vehicles parked in fields given over to parking, can be seen from distant hills. It is the same at Ribblehead, where the lines of parked vehicles can be seen from the summit of Whernside, the highest of the Yorkshire Three Peaks.
And, 70 years ago, in August, 1954, the people of Craven were following with keen interest a census being carried out on the amount and variety of traffic using the district's roads. The Craven Herald reported at the time that 'several major highways' cut through the district. It was, said the Herald "becoming increasingly difficult in which was once a wild and rugged area to find peace from the noise and bustle of motor vehicles.
" In a editorial, the paper's editor complained: "In addition to the procession of heavy lorries on the main roads, there are now even bigger processions of vehicles carrying holidaymakers from towns and cities to the Craven Dales. Motor coaches poke their bonnets into quiet hamlets or travel over lonely fells. Motor cars move nimbly about the district and park in their hundreds at the beauty spots.
Motor cycles whine and splutter." "Mechanisation, this century", the editor went on, "with the invention of the internal c.