UKH

Langdale. The National Trust has closed its car park at The Old Dungeon Ghyll for the duration of the current period of Lockdown. The large Stickle Ghyll car park, adjacent to The Stickle Barn, will remain open as are its toilets. Details will be updated if there are any changes.

Good to know, thanks.

It'd be great if they could enter the C21st and allow card payments for parking... I wonder how many people routinely carry half a dozen pound coins.... suspect they those who do tend to be of a certain... vintage.

The other option would be for them to require fewer pound coins! 

Mobile reception is non existent there.......

Yes, indeed!

The NT carpark at ODG takes phone payments. Last time I was there it was phone only, so couldn't use my big bag of pound coins. But there's no reception. They had a sign saying to pay when you get up in the fells and signal is better

Lack of signal may be why they don't take card.  With phone payments a lot of the systems let you pay any time up to midnight, which helps.

Never worried me as i use my NT card...lol. But the number of people wondering around the car park looking for change makes me laugh evry time.

I will remebr that and charge them for the advice.

No - people of a certain level of common sense who recognise the World for what it is rather than what they'd like it to be and go prepared.

I'm vintage enough to know that expecting to drive around the country and never need to use coins on your journey is folly, however much you would like things to be different. 

In my experience older people know much more about software, computers and the electronic world than young people. It's called knowledge, wisdom and experience, something young people take a while to acquire, I remember it well. When you have used computers for 50 years a bit rubs off. You will get there one day.

DC

In my experience knowledge or any particular subject doesn't always correlate well with age. Thought you might have spotted that yourself with so much accrued wisdom...

I wonder how many people routinely carry walking and climbing gear when heading up to Langdale....suspect those that do tend to think they might need them and prepare accordingly.

I'll be sure to remember that next time I have to provide tech support for oldies in my extended family that have used computers since before I was born.

Signed: a 34 year old millennial with 30 years of computing experience.

Why do you need a phone signal to pay with a card?

Because the payment verification systems for card require an internet connection. That does not have to be a GSM signal however, a phone line would work and Langdale does have phone lines.

As Alkis has said it's to do the authorisation, which is mandatory for contactless payment to reduce fraud.  The only exception to that is "transit mode", which is how TfL uses it, i.e. touch-in touch-out type public transport use.

I'm not *sure* if it's mandatory for PIN verification, though, but rather it would be at retailer risk, so that might be possible.  However, every parking ticket machine I've paid card at that I can think of does do an authorisation, often taking ages.

I wonder what proportion of those of vintage years have been actually using computers (esp. in the sense of having to understand them) for 50 years though?  Or indeed how relevant much of that 50 years is to current mobile computing.  Even as a relatively sallow youth of 57, I can't in all honesty say my experiences back in the early 80s of chucking ebcdic into IBM360 mainframe to be especially useful when playing around with an Android phone.  Especially as it was via punched card

how are you a millennial at 34?!

Does the pin verification happen between the payment device and the card rather than needing a connection to the bank? 
I’m sure authorisation will need to talk to the bank though, otherwise how does it know you have any money?

A millenial is someone who cam,e of age around the millenium, not someonme born then.

Born 1980-early 2000s according to Wikipedia, so up to 40 years old!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

There are various definitions, but all of them encompass 1986.

40? That's practically a future-stealing baby boomer as far as the youth of today are concerned!

Time travel init.

Ha - apologies, and you're quite right. I wasn't intending to  say that older people can't use computers, phones or... debit/credit cards... but, merely that younger people are less likely to bother carrying cash! 

Yeh, exactly. I'm already thinking about and carrying enough metalwork, without having to lug around change that I was hoping to avoid parting with.

Fair enough. But, it's important never to give up hope when it comes to changing the world

Why would you want to avoid parting with your change?

I can't wait to offload it.

My grand daughter is about to start teething so I will be able to use up a few coins  popping them under her pillow when the tooth fairy has been.

I suppose that's not a problem for cashless advocates because they're far too sensible and rational to indulge in silly behaviour like that. 

Yeah, have you ever tried slipping a card machine under a sleeping kids pillow?

Um... Well... presumably you're retired Tom. But, I still have to work for my change...

PIN is on the card, yes.  Probably doesn't need to be in 2020 with almost everything online now, but remember it's early 2000s tech...we still used dial-up back then!

(That's why on e.g. Monzo you can only change it by going to a cash machine - it needs to be written to the card)

For a C&P transaction (but not a contactless one) it's possible for the retailer to take the risk, i.e. if you don't have any money they don't get paid.  For something as cheap as a day in a car park, that isn't a considerable risk, and most people will have enough money.  Same as if you used one of those manual machines to process the transaction.

Contactless payments used to be able to be processed offline (indeed most were) but there was too much fraud.

The easy answer to this is that you put a note under the pillow with a picture of a fairy on it saying "Dear X, the tooth fairy has transferred £Y into your bank account, hope you buy yourself something nice!"  If the kid is clever enough to recognise that the from account is their parent (kids of the age that believe in the tooth fairy probably won't notice that), they could always ask someone else to "launder" it whose surname the kid doesn't know.

As it's all supposed to be "magic" a kid won't question just how they managed to get their bank details any more than they question how Father Christmas can get down a 6" flue into the back of a gas boiler.

Point taken. 

I actually only offload casually what we call " brown soap"; the rest I do spend properly.

Yes, I could do that but...       .........you've just highlighted another virtue of cash: its simplicity for small transactions, like tooth fairies, buying poppies, tipping , etc -----when compared to the alternatives.

Not forgetting supermarket trolleys and probably illicit games of cards down the pub.

I have a trolley token for which I paid by card

I used to use pound coins, but couldn't discipline myself to make sure I didn't spend one of them!

Car parks are more of an irritant, though.  Generally, when I've used cash, I've tried to spend the coins down because they're bulky and inconvenient.  So the idea of needing to keep a large number of coins around for parking is a gross irritant.  I wouldn't mind if they accepted notes (though I understand that practically accepting cards is easier than notes!)

It just makes sense to use both cards and cash. Sometimes you need to pay for things in cash but even die hard cash supporters will sometimes be forced  to use a card ( not least to actually access their coin). 

As for carrying cash in your car, I can't see why keeping £10 worth of cash topped up in your console is any harder to organise than maintaining a supply of bog roll to hand in your bathroom or toilet.

I've got a year's supply of bog roll (Who Gives a Crap) in the back bedroom, for which I paid by, er, card?

The answer to that is that if you don't generally transact by cash, amassing it is not a convenient process.

And yet you had the foresight to buy(and the trouble of transporting) a substantial volume of bog roll.

You said it yourself - you don't generally transact in cash. So on a few occasions you do, and on those occasions you could organise your change, putting the £1 coins in a pile to keep in the car.

Anyway, this whole discussion didn't arise because someone arrived at a car park or other venue and was told that cash wasn't acceptable. I've heard about some shops trying this on but it hasn't affected me yet.

Have you entered the C21st and acquired a car?

There's certainly motivation for car parks to do away with cash - no longer needing to make frequent visits to empty it, for one, and for two less vandalism because people won't be trying to break into machines to nick it if it isn't there.

I'd venture that the number of car owners who don't have any form of payment card is either zero or very close to it.

But apparently not enough to put the strategy into practice.

I've finally caught up with the twentieth century, Bedspring! AI-driven carbon-neutral spaceship next!

Good effort. Hope to see you soon, maybe the Chew Valley, it has got a wild beauty, the Lake District is only one kind of beautiful.

i think Dovestones car park takes cards . 

Even so it earned £15000 last year through penalties.

Why is it closed?

There is a handwritten sign at the car park entrance saying it’s due to the “lack of facilities”, which I guess means the pub toilets, currently closed, but why does the lack of a toilet justify shutting the car park?

I've seen it at so many times in NT carparks, a car pulls up, everyone gets out, the person looks at the ticket machine and declares there is no card payment facility. Everyone walks off and NT lose £4 - £8 each time.

That must add up in popular spots like Langdale, Tarn Howes and Borrowdale. The investment in a mobile signal repeater would pay for itself very quickly. If YHA Blacksail can use a satellite phone I'm sure a large organisations like NT can help itself maintain an easy revenue stream.

Its the same reason that many climbing clubs have banned access to their hut car parks. I think that one view is that when someone has driven an hour or more, that on arrival they will need the toilet, and that people weeing and even pooing all over the place is possibly unsanitary and a bad thing at anytime, but more so during a health emergency. 

Some people note that you can dig a hole, but not sure the NT or the farmer with the field next door wants holes with poo all over the place.

The provision of public toilets in the UK is a disgrace.

The Cumbrian fells are all kinds of beauty; that Peak stuff is just bald hillocks and tourists as far as I can see ;p But, yes, would be great to see you and to get out somewhere. If there's an easing of restrictions and a dry patch, perhaps a Lancashire quarry day could also be a goer. Will ring you back soon - was in a call yesterday.

The Scottish mountains are all kinds of beauty; that Cumbrian fells stuff is just bald hillocks and tourists as far as I can see....

The main car park at Stickle Barn is open so there is still plenty of parking and the toilets there are open so parking and spending a penny shouldn't be a problem given that most of us shouldn't be there during the current lockdown.