Why we must stop the sale of disposable barbecues to protect the countryside - Andrew Vine

The peaceful clifftops of Flamborough, with their breathtaking views and soundtrack of nesting seabird colonies, are an unlikely place to get into a furious argument, but that’s what happened to me a week ago.

The reason? I was among a group of people who challenged a man about to flick a cigarette lighter to ignite a disposable barbecue on tinder-dry grassland, which posed the risk of setting off a wildfire that could have torn across a couple of miles of clifftop between North Landing and Flamborough Head, fanned by the sea breeze.

He was a nasty piece of work, and the woman with him no less hostile in her attitude. They were going to have their barbecue whether anybody liked it or not, and to hell with the possible consequences.

A couple walking the cliffs 50 yards ahead of me intervened first, getting a load of foul-mouthed abuse for their trouble, and so did I when I hurried forward to back them up.

Only with the arrival of two more people, making five of us remonstrating with him, did he back down, and then mainly because the couple who first intervened threatened to call the police.

Nothing else made the slightest impression on him, not pointing out he was on a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve, or pleas to his common sense that a fire could wreak enormous harm on a precious environment. All we got in reply was a torrent of four-letter words.

Eventually, he and his companion picked up their unlit barbecue and bagful of food to cook on it and stalked off towards the car park at North Landing, hurling abuse over their shoulders as they went.

The five of us who were the targets chatted for a minute or two about the sheer irresponsible idiocy of what we’d just seen, before going on our way.

I suspect the thought that lingered with us all – and unsettled the rest of my day – was the fire risk had only moved somewhere else. That man was going to light his barbecue come what may.

The badges of people like him are all over the Yorkshire countryside this summer.

I’ve lost count of how many blackened patches of ground I’ve seen while out in the Dales, the North Yorkshire Moors and at the coast, the aftermath of those foil barbecues and the thoughtlessness of the people who lit them.

It will be the same all over the country and perhaps those barbecues were the cause of wildfires such as the one which broke out on Marsden Moor in March, or which in recent weeks have devastated majestic landscapes including Tintwistle Moor in the Peak District and the Cairngorms national park in Scotland.

In Yorkshire, we know only too well where the couldn’t-care-less attitude I witnessed at Flamborough leads. A campfire or a gas burner probably caused the wildfire that consumed 10 square miles of the North Yorkshire Moors last year, burning for 40 days and putting the lives of firefighters and farmers at risk as they fought to extinguish it, their task made even more hazardous by exploding shells left over from the area’s days as a military gunnery range.

A year on, the work to restore the blackened moorland continues and there is still a long way to go. People who work in the area are also still counting the cost of the damage to their livelihoods.

The increasingly hot and dry summers we are having mean that a step-change is required in how we protect the countryside and its wildlife.

Appealing to people’s better natures by urging them not to light fires or barbecues in the countryside is no longer enough. There is quite obviously a hard core of people who will take absolutely no notice.

Perhaps it is time to start regular drone surveillance of natural parks and beauty spots during the summer months, which was done during the Covid pandemic in search of people breaking the rules on meeting others, as a deterrent as well as providing an early alert of fires breaking out.

But one measure that would greatly reduce the fire risk is to stop the sale of disposable barbecues. Nobody really needs one of these things, and getting them out of the countryside altogether would do everybody who loves the natural landscapes of Yorkshire a favour.

An outright ban by the government is the best solution, but that would take time to implement.

In the interim, the major retail chains that sell the overwhelming majority of barbecues could demonstrate a sense of social responsibility by withdrawing them from sale, at the very least whenever a prolonged hot and dry spell is forecast.

We all have a part to play in preventing wildfires. And as the man at Flamborough proved, asking people politely doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you’ve got to take action.