While it might boast more acres than there are words in the Bible, Yorkshire has only three natural lakes.

Perversely, the largest is called a tarn, Malham. If truth be told, it is a somewhat dreary sheet of water. Spread like a tablecloth on a sprawling, rather featureless fell, it looks - to say an Irish thing - peculiarly flat.

Not so its two sister lakes. Gormire - deep in a glacial hollow, mysterious, secret. Overlooked by the shattered inland cliffs of Sutton Bank and embowered in trees, its fascination is infinite.

Then there is Semerwater. Cupped in lovely hills, this is the most beautiful Yorkshire lake. Of Ice Age origin like the other two, in legend it is said to conceal a once prosperous city. Refused food and drink by its selfish citizens, an angel posing as a beggar condemned it to a watery grave by commanding: "Semerwater Rise.''

All is peace and quiet at Semerwater. Except for four days each week, including Sundays, from April to September. Then the roar of power boats, pounding along this small sheet of water, just half a mile long, resounds across the lake and echoes in the surrounding hills.

Can this be in keeping with the spirit of national parks? Notoriously, their stated leisure role, to allow people to enjoy the special qualities of the landscape, does not exclude noisy pursuits. Nevertheless, quiet recreation has always been at the heart of our national parks.

In essence, these largely wild landscapes are places to escape modern stress, of which noise is very much a part. Power boats tearing up and down a small lake in a tiny shepherd's dale hardly seem compatible with that aim.

In the Lake District a much larger power-boat fraternity than the one that frequents Semerwater has been ousted from Windermere by a national park authority determined to restore to England's largest lake something of the serenity it had in Wordsworth's day. As a showpiece of the Dales, a miniature gem as precious in its own way as Windermere, Semerwater deserves equally strong resolve to banish the noisy intruders.

Critics of my call for Cleveland authorities to reassert their historic county ties rather missed the point. Of course it's a plain fact, as they say, that North Tees is Durham and South Tees is Yorkshire. But not all former Clevelanders are confident of that. And the rest of Britain is far from convinced.

National media reports of last weekend's Seaton Carew tragedy put the town in "Cleveland". Ditto reports of Saltburn's hanging basket sabotage. Ostensibly celebrating the Yorkshire Ridings, a new book omits Cleveland altogether - though it is clear the author regards the Cleveland coast as separate from the Yorkshire coast. And while major Yorkshire towns might not add the county to their official address, most mail addressed to Middlesbrough has a county added - the defunct "Cleveland".

So if the historic ties, expressed by the placing of the Teesside towns in either Durham or Yorkshire for ceremonial purposes, are truly valued, there is a clear need to promote them - and consign Cleveland to oblivion. If my column endures expect more from me on this, but, since the topic is boring to many, not for a while.