Management of Vistors

With so many visitors coming to Dinton Pastures, it is essential to manage them effectively in order to minimise the disturbance they cause to others and the park! The main ways we manage this are listed below:

Zoning

One way of doing this is by zoning the park. This means that when the park was first set up certain areas of the park are chosen for certain activities. For example, fishing is restricted to White Swan Lake and sections of the River Loddon, while watersports are restricted to Black Swan Lake. This successfully separates two potentially conflicting sports.

Another activity that conflicts with these leisure pursuits is the management of wildlife. The impact of hundreds of thousands of visitors does, unfortunately, have a detrimental effect on areas of the park, and it's associated wildlife. To combat this some areas are set aside purely for the benefit of wildlife. Lavell's Lake, to the north of the Dinton Site, is a good example of this. Some areas of the site here are out of access to members of the general public, specifically to provide a quiet haven for nesting birds and insects.

Fortunately visitors themselves are quite helpful in the zoning process. As previously mentioned the majority of human visitors to the park stay close to the café and bird feeding areas, not venturing too far into the rest of the park. Whilst this makes this part of the park extremely busy, it leaves the rest of the site substantially quieter. Basically the further away from the main car park you go the less human visitors there will be, offering a quieter haven for our birds and mammals!

This is all the result of the initial careful planning of the park in the late 1970's, when it was decided to focus developments such as the café and play area in the same place. The other main development on the site is that of the sailing and golf clubs, which were developed further around Black Swan Lake to stop congestion around the lake.

Path routing

Paths around Dinton Pastures are designed to keep visitors within designated areas, whilst still providing access to the site. By concentrating most visitors to the same route, erosion is focused on the footpaths, minimising erosion pressures on the surrounding land.

Different users tend to make use of different routes. For example dog walkers are asked to use a separate path when entering the site so that the mess created is kept away from other site users, and sailing and golf club users have a separate car park and entrance to the park to minimise congestion.

Path standard

There are various standards of footpaths throughout the Dinton site, ranging from a high quality access trail, suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs, down to gravel and grass trails. The level of access encouraged to areas of the site determines the standard of these. For example, the access trail, near the entrance to the site, is encouraging people to use this section of the site, while up in the northern corner of the site at Lavell's Lake, where wildlife is encouraged, most of the paths consist of just a mown grass trail.

Vandalism

Unfortunately, one of the common problems with many sites in urban areas is vandalism. To minimise this problem we try to educate the local community about the problem and effect of vandalism, as well as patrolling the site. This method is fairly successful, with vandalism not being too big a problem at Dinton Pastures.