EASTER is normally an awakening - a time when the year seems to perk up. Spring is here and summer is somewhere over the horizon. Yet there is a sinking feeling about this Easter.

The foot and mouth crisis continues to affect many businesses as well as farming itself, with some of the loudest complaints coming from the tourism industry and country pubs.

As we report today, country pubs in North Yorkshire could even be forced to close as earnings have plummeted because foot and mouth restrictions are keeping visitors away.

New figures released by the Brewers' and Licensed Retailers' Association indicate that nationally the foot and mouth crisis is costing pubs and brewing an estimated £38 million a month, with one in ten pubs either closing or facing a significant fall in profits.

Andy Cole knows all about such figures. As the new licensee of the Wombwell Arms at Wass, near Helmsley, Mr Cole has been behind the bar for just three months, and in that time business has been cut by half. As Mr Cole says: "It's absolutely desperate for rural pubs."

If the rural pub, so long a firm favourite of the British landscape, is threatened by the foot and mouth crisis, tourism in general is suffering terribly too. The British Hospitality Association today reports that of 500 hotels surveyed, 80 per cent were reporting lower business than at this time last year.

Such figures illustrate all too starkly the problems facing tourism. Tony Blair wants to tell the world that Britain is open, as his visit to York last week showed.

Yet while visitors from abroad remain at best hesitant about visiting us during the foot and mouth crisis, an estimated 1.75 million Britons are voting with their passport by taking Easter breaks abroad.

A wet spring, foot and mouth and the prospects of what the weathermen say will be a cool and cloudy Easter have combined to make abroad a sunnier prospect.

The longer it stays, the wider this crisis seems to spread.

Updated: 10:33 Wednesday, April 11, 2001