I HOPE Mr Wingfield's letter (August 10) is a gentle leg-pull, but you do, in your editorial, worrying about turning the Forest into a "theme park", take it seriously and ask for comments from readers.
I am at the moment – as a regular Forest visitor since 1980 – studying the long term interest of many cities (particularly those in the US with strong astronomy research interests) in reducing the impact of street and other urban lighting, on views of the night sky.
There is a growing concern that pollution caused by CO2 plus "sky glow" is causing generations of children to miss a view of the stars. If you add to this the fear of crime and accident that keeps many children indoors – with the alternative attractions of virtual reality – and the spreading "umbrella" of indoor recreation and exercise we are regressing, in a paradoxical way, to the same fear of the "outdoors," especially at night, that was characteristic of our medieval ancestors.
You rightly apprehend the possibility that Forest Enterprise – in their very understandable need to attract visitors in these difficult times for the rural economy – may be responding to these primeval anxieties.
Victorian street lighting indeed brought civilisation to the hazardous streets and alleys of our newly industrialised cities, but a century and a half later the process has gone too far and many now recognise the phenomenon of "light pollution."
Just as far-sighted people are seeking relief from the towering glow of cities that extend for miles around them and the river of yellow lights that spread beyond a motorway so we need to be on our guard against plans to make the countryside, and the Forest especially, into places where becomes impossible, in your correspondent's (surely) tongue-in-cheek phrases, to "feel a sense of isolation", experience "a lonely and dark environment" or to get some taste of "an extensive forest wilderness" in a "night-time atmosphere" where, God forbid, one might even get lost for a while. – Simon Baddeley, Lydbrook.