Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Should we ban drones from our national parks?

issue 24 June 2023

I have a plan for my old age. Now that we all might live for a century or so, feeling redundant and bemused, it’s important to prepare and I have. In my eighties I will be a destroyer of drones. All drones will fall within my remit but my speciality will be hobby drones, the remote-control quadcopters that whine over the English countryside, up and down the coast and round and round above our national parks.

To any passerby I will seem innocuous; just your average rambling octogenarian. But tucked away beside my Freedom Pass will be a catapult and the case containing my varifocals will be heavy with 6mm steel ball bearings.

I turned and saw the little horror skimming the waves, a blot against the bright sky

The plan came to me a few days ago as I was floating in the North Sea. It was a slack tide, the only time that’s really good for swimming, and the seals were crooning.

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