Excellent improvements at Clent Hills CP

I have not seen motorbikes on the Clent Hills but, in nearly fifty years of visiting the Clent Hills, I had never seen a traffic jam, a slow procession of nine 4x4s on the very summit of the West Midlands' highest hill, as I did on that fine and snowy Sunday evening last January!

I hope I am wrong, but it may be only a question of time before Dudley's gang of dirt motorbikers decide to try out Walton Hill from the big car park and, try out Adams Hill via the Hill Tavern (further away for them).  For years, they have enjoyed parts of the Barrow Hill Local Nature Reserve and the Dudley section of the major and important, supposedly traffic-free, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Magnificent Mudway from Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhampton.

Unfortunately, as our population rises, there have to be restrictions and rationing imposed on our human activities if we cannot show some restraint ourselves.  We live on an ailing planet that is not expanding in line with our ever-increasing demands placed upon it.  When Nimmings car park is full, motorists will simply have to drive back home and try cycling and walking, as I and my family do, anyway.

I am keeping to my 50% cut in car mileage this year compared to what I drove in 2019.  Every other motorist needs to do the same, if we are to stand any chance at all of turning things around.

Please, no expansion of Nimmings car park - ever!  Simply, provide more proper cycle parking stands and NOT the dreadful, 'slot your front wheel into the narrow rack to nicely buckle the front wheel', parking!

And support the WMCA's W Mids National Park to include the Clent Hills Country Park in the properly funded, 32 sq Kms Clent Hills Regional Park (my designation).  Funding for arable farming for local food production, hedgerow restoration, woodland management and footpath maintenance.

Clent Hills Regional Park in the WM National Park is vital because of ...

Since the announcement by the W Mids Combined Authority of a W Midlands National Park, I've been supporting Prof Kathryn Moore of Birmingham City University over that initiative by herself.  I've been arguing for a Clent Hills Regional Park, like the Pentland Hills RP, south of Edinburgh.  I feel this is necessary to protect it from built development; to encourage more farming to feed the Black Country and Brum; and, for recreation.

POINTS IN ITS FAVOUR and how it could benefit:

• The importance of our two 1,000 feet hills and the beauty of their foothills, woods and valleys to the east that, include the Abbey, Infirmary and the site of fish ponds.
• This valuable open space for farming and recreation is a 32 sq Km Golden Green Triangle, bounded by the two main roads west of M5, Jct 3 to Jct 4.
• The sad state of hedgerows with many gaps as they mature and never seem to benefit from hedge-laying to rejuvenate them.
• The extensive network of public rights of way but, the shabby, dilapidated stiles and poor signs.
• The Halesowen Railway line that now has permission from the landowner, to walk his section from Dowery Dell to Frankley and on to Longbridge on better public paths;
• It has one SSSI, the Clent Hills Country Park and another next to it but outside the triangle.

Our West Midlands National Park

Taking the term at face value is simply a wonderful way for us to promote our own Golden Green Triangle that already has the Clent Hills CP as the glorious climax as you move from the M5 westwards over the foothills, fields, woods, the Dowery Dell Adventure Trail and fishing pools to the Clent Hills and Wychbury Hill themselves.

It is another tool in the toolbox for us to use in insisting that this most important triangle is sacrosanct and available only for farming and recreation.  Nothing else!

On Friday, James Morris suggested to me that it might be an AONB.  That's fine with me if we can't get it with an even more important designation like a National Park reserve for the urban dwellers of the W Midlands.  Or, as the Clent Hills Regional Park.  Any such designation frightens off the greedy concrete, brick and tarmac brigade and helps our cause.

The people - ourselves - must hi-jack the term/phrase for our own ends and must make the two words, National Park, to mean exactly what it so blindingly obvious must mean or, should mean, at any rate.  A people takeover!

Any such talk like this bolsters up or talks up the high importance of our 32 sq Kms in the corridors of power for only farming and recreation.

Proposed Clent Hills Regional Park

Dear Prof Kathryn

I am delighted to read about the W Mids National Park that you have drawn up. I wonder if you feel able to go one step further?

I am asking for your agreement, support and promotion to give national park standard protection to our 30 sq Kms Clent Hills Golden Green Triangle with its boundaries of one motorway and two dual carriageways around the 1,000 feet high Clent Hills and its foothills of fields, woodland, footpaths and fishing pools.

The 30 sq Kms Triangle has obvious and natural boundaries from the three major roads south of the Halesowen bypass that is one of the major roads.

It has the Clent Hills Country Park on one side of it.

One Woodland Trust property and many other delightful woods.

The unofficial, but still walked for 150 years, Dowery Dell Trail following the line of the Halesowen Railway from Hunnington Station to Longbridge Station.

A large network of public paths and bridleways.

This proposed 30 sq Kms regional park is adjacent to the two million population of the Black Country and Brum.

It is vital that it is now used, increasingly, for organic food farming to cut back on very harmful fossil fuel food miles.

It is essential for recreation and for amenity - for all the population on its doorstep.

It is urgent to stop the insidious urban encroachment, with national park standard of protection.

It can help postpone Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations", "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings.

IT IS INEXCUSABLE THAT IT SHOULD EVER BE CONSIDERED FOR RESIDENTIAL AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. 46 'Call for Sites' are within Dudley's green belt.

Would you, Professor Kathryn, feel able to support national park planning constraints and laws governing this important triangle?

The more people who can go along with my suggestion, the sooner we can stop built development of all kinds coming to the Clent Hills Regional Park.  Please call it by this name that then helps to get the authorities to also accept the name, to use it and therefore to live up to that name and all it entails in forbidding built development on land that has never had built development.

With best wishes

Tim (Weller)

CLENT HILLS REGIONAL PARK

Dear friends

I am asking for your agreement, support and promotion to give national park standard protection to our 30 sq Kms Golden Green Triangle with its boundaries of one motorway and two dual carriageway​s​ around the ​1,000 feet ​high Clent Hills and its glorious foothills of fields, woodland, footpaths and fishing pools.

This proposed 30 sq Kms regional park is adjacent to the two million population of the Black Country and Brum.
It is vital that it is now used, increasingly, for organic food farming to cut back on very harmful fossil fuel food miles.
It is essential for recreation and for amenity - for all the population on its doorstep.
It is urgent to stop the insidious urban encroachment, with national park standard of protection.
It can help postpone Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations", "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings.
IT IS INEXCUSABLE THAT IT SHOULD EVER BE CONSIDERED FOR RESIDENTIAL AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.

Please write to, speak to and lobby the people whose e-mails are public - MEPs, MPs, councillors, Dudley Council officers.

The more people who can go along with my suggestion, the sooner we can stop built development of all kinds coming to the Clent Hills Regional Park.  Please call it by this name that then helps to get the authorities to also accept the name, to use it and, therefore to live up to that name and all it entails in forbidding nearly all built development on land that has never had built development.