29 January 2021
Dear friends - and Emma in particular
Nothing quite like a pandemic for stopping all non-essential travel to make for 4x4 traffic chaos on the Walton Hill summit ridge!
This will stop the 4x4s from Walton Hill Road car park using the N Worcs Way bridleway but still allow the horses and walkers through:-
Thanks for writing back, Mick but not all your information is correct.
No gate was smashed to gain access for the off-roaders when I was with them last Sunday evening. The Warden with the NT Land Rover, that I met with Richard Marchant on Tuesday, agreed with me that there never had been a gate there, as far as he knew. So no gate to smash down! It certainly looked as though there had never been a gate there. Is that really true, Emma?
I cycled over this afternoon and the bridleway remains so obviously an open invitation for drivers to go up it from the Walton Hill Road car park and do a wheelie or two around the trig pillar before trundling back down! I quite understand why the 'car club' thought it was a green lane open to all traffic, as one driver told me. I think, he even said 'Sorry' for disturbing my walk!
This afternoon, on the brick track between Ferns Hollow and Walton Hill Farm, I met a horse rider. She lives locally and has known about the 4x4s going up onto the summit ridge for all the ten years she has lived, nearby. It is always the case with snow and about five or six times every year, she said. She did not seem to mind, at all! She explained that all the Trust needs to do is to put a locked metal gate at the foot of the N Worcs Way bridleway but to leave a gap (as at Ferns Hollow) or, a metal walkers' gate, next to the locked 4x4 motorists' gate. As long as it is not a kissing gate, both walkers and even horses can easily get through. Problem solved!
However, perhaps the Trust has lost interest in all responsibility for their land. Are they actually wanting the off-roaders and the grass cut up and the roadside verges turned into "carnage", as this afternoon's horse rider described it as?
A lot of work is needed on the Clent Hills, including the gully/soil erosion. Please use my wife's life membership of the Trust and for our hundreds or thousands of pounds profit that the Trust has made from our decades of visiting their properties and for our expenditure there.
Emma, who was the NT staff member with your Land Rover, with Richard Marchant, at Kenelm Wood Yard?
Has the Warden's Base been moved there from High Harcourt Farm?
Is the worker allowed to do any repair work with a spade to fill in the wheel ruts, from my evidence, above?
Should I cycle up there with my spade and do the work for you?
Best wishes
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