IN some continental cities like Paris, cemeteries are firmly fixed on the itinerary of thousands of tourists.

Walking tours are even arranged to take groups of trippers down leafy paths through ranks of varied tombstones.

What a contrast with the sad plight of so many of our cemeteries and graveyards.

Years of neglect have left them run-down, overgrown and ravaged by vandals.

Many headstones and surrounds have collapsed because ageing relatives do not have the money to repair them or because there are no relatives to notice what has happened.

Other headstones have been pushed over as a safety precaution because of worries that they might fall and injure someone. Now the council has said it does not have the money to repair footpaths at Blackburn Cemetery despite a written assurance two years ago that work would be carried out.

The cemetery includes dozens of war graves.

Local authority budgets are tight and it is difficult to assess priorities but many cemeteries provide open space in urban areas that many people could enjoy walking in.

Leaving them to become inaccessible to the public is a waste of resources as well as upsetting to relatives of the dead.