Odd to find yourself suddenly living in a national park. When the boundaries of the new South Downs park were announced this week, I discovered that I am slap-bang in the middle of it. It is hard not to feel a little proud.

The campaign to have the South Downs, 625 square miles of hill, chalk cliff and downland, protected as a national park, has been rumbling along for 60 years. It has taken Labour ten years to seal the deal; it was in 1999 that John Prescott, then the Deputy Prime Minister, told his party's annual conference that it would be the Government's “gift for the nation”. Yet it has taken ten years and two public inquiries to have the park confirmed.

At issue was not only the existence of the park itself, opposed by West Sussex County Council and, at the start, by East Sussex, as well as local Conservative MPs as an imposition by national government, but its boundaries - and in particular whether it included the Western Weald, an area of different topography, being mostly wood and heathland, not chalk hills. I live in the Western Weald and kept well out of the argument. The trouble is that once you create a national park everyone wants to be in it, not outside; otherwise guess where the new housebuilding will go? So there was jubilation in the Western Weald when it was included this week; yet the council and local MPs remained vocal in their opposition.

It is an odd democratic experience to live in the middle of almost universal jubilation about a decision, and to hear elected representatives speaking out against it. Watching politicians risk such unpopularity has been rather refreshing.

The Conservative leader of West Sussex very grudgingly said that he was “prepared to accept the decision”. Nick Herbert, the Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs, slated it: “The transfer of authority from elected local councils to a new quango, which will take more planning decisions than in any other national park, is a step in precisely the wrong direction.”

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP for Chichester, declared it “a frontal assault on local democracy”.

Their objection is that, with a population of 120,000, this is the most populated national park in the country; it cannot be run as a tourist vision of rural Britain, rolling hills preserved in aspic. With 85 per cent farmed land, it is not a national park like the valleys and fells of the Lake District, or the moorland of Northumberland. It is both more built-up and more agricultural.

You're telling me. If I look out of my window I see not wild meadow or heathland, but farmland; if I open it I hear, yes, the wind off the Downs, but also the Friday evening traffic off the main road. This is not unspoilt countryside. It can be hard to escape road noise around here, even up on the top of the Downs. And national park status can only make that worse, for people living around the park as well as within it.

“My worry is that everybody will think this is a great idea until the first coach park is proposed”, Mr Herbert said, “and local people find they can do nothing to stop it.”

Michael Hitchcock, the professor of tourism at Chichester University, confirmed that we can expect an increase in traffic: “National park status is an indicator of quality. It will make people look at the South Downs very differently.” Research has shown that large numbers of visitors to national parks do not stray far from their cars. They drive there, get out, wander around a little, often on walkways, get back in, drive to another spot. It doesn't sound terribly environmentally friendly.

The experience of other national parks has been that residents' delight can quickly turn to horror when they see the extra traffic, the car parks and the public toilets. “I hear the Evening Standard has been calling this the green lung of London!” one outraged woman protested this week, “Look! I can see a trail of coaches now!” Farmers are as horrified at the thought of walkers on their fields.

What a load of Nimbies we all are: residents on the one hand delighted that no new housing estates will be built, on the other dreading the day-trippers, farmers worrying over access to their land, politicians clinging on to their powers. These rolling hills may be beautiful to look at but they were pretty ugly at heart this week, swelling with selfishness: let us have beauty and fresh air. But only for us. And definitely not for anyone in a coach.

A friend of mine lives in one of the other eight national parks, the Peak District, which attracts more tourism than anywhere in the country, being within an hour's drive of half the population. He tells me that the park authority does a better job of protecting the countryside from the blight of cheap housing than, historically, local authorities did when the park was created. Traffic can be a nuisance, he admitted, but was more than compensated by the boost to local businesses.

And, yes, people get angry about the park authority not being democratically accountable locally, but the whole point of national parks was to give the nation a say, and conflict between local wishes and the national heritage is inevitable. And he should know - he used to be an MP in the area (His name is Matthew Parris).

What is curious, in the South Downs, is that the Government has chosen to entrench an area of privilege. Its decision has ensured that any future development occurs in more deprived towns along the South Coast. Part of the anger from those living outside the park is that, while protecting the Downs, ministers have also prescribed 74,000 new houses in West Sussex, including an extremely unpopular eco-town at Ford, just beyond the park boundaries.

“If you look at a wealth map of the South Downs,” said one thoughtful council official, “there is considerable local wealth surrounded by considerable local poverty. All the indices of deprivation are excluded from the national park.” Which is nice for those of us in it, but an odd decision for a Labour Government. Mr Prescott presented this move ten years ago as a sort of vanity project, an homage to Labour's past: “It was that great postwar Labour Government which gave Britain its first national parks - the jewels of the countryside.” He has ended up giving, not so much a gift to the nation, which was free to walk here any time it liked anyway, as a gift to people like me. It's no false modesty to say, we really have done nothing to deserve it.

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