IT SEEMS highly unlikely that anyone would seek to develop a fantasy folly-type tourist attraction, attracting up to 70,000 car-borne visitors a year, in open countryside in the heart of a national park.

That's not what national parks are for, as the Yorkshire Dales' planning officer told this week's public inquiry into the Forbidden Corner development near Middleham. The national park is all about preserving and enhancing the natural landscape and helping people to enjoy it, he added.

The Forbidden Corner was not about, or part of, the natural landscape, therefore it had no place in the national park, his argument continued.

Most people would applaud such sentiment. That is the essence of the national park philosophy. And yet, at the Forbidden Corner, we have a planning dispute which cannot be seen in such black-and-white terms.

Although these factors are not necessarily planning considerations, there is almost universal agreement that what Mr Colin Armstrong has created at Tupgill park is a discreet, creative fantasy park which is highly entertaining and brings many visitors to the area. Those visitors are highly valued by the tourist industry in nearby Middleham and Leyburn.

The planning application has also passed muster with the district council and the local branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England - further evidence that the development has considerable support from the community.

What is clearly a planning issue is the traffic the development generates. The roads leading to Tupgill are narrow country lanes and there has to be control over the number of visitors the park attracts. Mr Armstrong has, it should be said at this point, already imposed a limit on those numbers with his advance booking system and the county council's highways department has also said it is now happy with the access arrangments.

Another factor, which a bureaucrat would not perhaps not consider relevant, is that the Forbidden Corner is only just, by about a mile, within the National Park boundary. A jog of the draughtsman's elbow in the 1940s might have meant no public inquiry in 2000.

The inquiry inspector, it is to be hoped will take all these issues into account in his deliberations. He will also consider the duty on the national park to foster the economic and social well-being of park residents and whether or not the balance between that duty and the duty to protect the landscape has been struck correctly.

If the inspector accepts that Mr Armstrong's self-imposed restrictions on visitor numbers and opening times can be maintained, perhaps through strict planning conditions attached to the granted application, there seems no reason why the Forbidden Corner should not remain open to an eager public