Making Plans for Brockhole

Brockhole is the Lake District National Park Authority visitor centre and is justly famous. It's a Victorian mansion which stands in Thomas Mawson-designed grounds on the shore of England's largest lake.

It's a lovely old building in a superb setting. I'm quite fond of it.

But over the years it has suffered at the hands of consultants, planners and a number of folk who wanted to improve it, maximise it's visitor potential or chop bits down. As the Park has gradually withdrawn from servicing visitors - closing down many of its tourist information centres, for example - Brockhole is looking increasingly out on a limb, exposed to the cruel ravages of the UK recession and political whim.

Now we have yet another Masterplan. Yes, they've been making plans for Brockhole so that it can boldly go into the 21st century. This was reported yesterday in the Cumbria media, including my own Westmorland Gazette. Not unnaturally, I wanted to tackle it in my front page cartoon.

You can see the results below. My first batch was rejected as a little too aggressive. I submitted a second selection and … we went for a cartoon about Crooklands village constantly losing its electricity supply, whilst the rest of Cumbria gets superfast broadband.

What do you think? Was the right choice? Comments welcome below.

(The musical links in this week's blog are entirely gratuitous. I needed cheering up.)

Veg out

A horticultural theme for this week's Westmorland Gazette cartoon candidates.

Venerable organisation Cumbria In Bloom - which celebrates the best towns and villages in the area - is suffering a shortfall in its finances.

And Brockhole's famous, 110-year old monkey puzzle tree has finally been cut down, despite protests. The National Park Authority says it's been done in order to make the garden more in line with designer Thomas Mawson's original intentions. Complete with adventure playground.

None of which is as exciting as the US Presidential Election but that's the lot of the local cartoonist. Compensate by making Your Vote Count in the comments box below and say which cartoon you think should grace today's front page.

There are no exit polls, no unnecessary chads, no vote rigging … simply head straight to my website to see if you were right.

Spooky

Last week's Westmorland Gazette newspaper stories presented a challenge for the front page cartoon.

The main story was the proposal to build 20,000 new homes in South Lakes. Some bright spark had realised that some of those new homes would be inhabited by children. And those children would need schools … In fact, the estimate was that South Lakes would need two entirely new primary schools.

Elsewhere, the National Park Authority were continuing with their plan to cut down Brockhole National Park Centre's famous, 100-year old monkey puzzle tree. Protestors were galvanised into action and chained themselves to the tree.

The challenge for the cartoonist? Remaining tasteful.

As usual, I may not have been entirely successful.

Add your comments below, then swoosh across to my website to see which cartoon my editor picked.

Click on any of the cartoons for a bigger and scruffier version