Tack Farm, Dowery Dell Trail and W Mids National Park

 Thanks, Chris for your interest in these matters.

The name is Charles Bibbey at 

Tack Farm, Uffmoor Lane, Romsley, Halesowen B62 0NP

St Modwen, I understand, wants to develop the land for housing, when we need it to grow our food to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  One contact I have for St Modwen is Rob Flavell who is copied into this email if he wishes to clarify for us where his company stands on this matter.

I would also be glad of your support for Rob/St Modwen to finish the Dowery Dell Trail - our name for the walkway on or near the Halesowen Railway line to Longbridge High Street.  Roy Burgess gave it that name.  It runs from the new path I re-opened on the public right of way in 2019, that starts in the SE corner of land owned by Romsley and Hunnington Sports and Social Club, opposite the former Blue Bird sweet factory.  We have the landowner's permission to walk the railway line from the site of the Dowery Dell viaduct to the right of way subway beneath the M5 and, from there, it is a cycle-walkway, signed as a public footpath that soon becomes the Princess Diana Way and/or NCR5 but, goes only to the A38 at Rubery/Rednal.  It comes out into Leybrook Road by Colmers Farm Primary School on the A38.

St Modwen knows that it needs to be finished, through their land, on the north side of the R Rea, aka Callow Brook so that it takes the old railway line tunnel beneath the A38 (safeguarded and available) into Austin Park.  However, it is taking a very long time to be finished!

Would you also be so good as to support Prof Kathryn Moore, also copied in so you get her email address, over the West Mids National Park plan that is fully endorsed by the WMCA.  Mick Freer (michael.freer@btinternet.com) is not enamoured with the idea, thinking that the purpose is to facilitate economic growth and more loss of greenbelt.  However, Roy Burgess and I are wanting the Clent Hills Country Park to be extended into its foothills as the Clent Hills Regional Park over our 32 sq Kms Golden Green Triangle, bounded by M5, A456 and A491.

Many thanks and best wishes

"Revealed: £4bn plan to get city moving" Post 13 Nov

In nearly fifty years of living and working in Wider Birmingham I have seen umpteen of these magnificent transport plans that promise so much and deliver so little, if anything.

I came to Brum in the 1960s when the Victorian New Street Station had just been demolished and rebuilt to be a virtual underground station filled with poisonous diesel fumes.  In the 1970s, the Victorian Snow Hill Station went the same way - bulldozed.  Realising their error, it was quickly rebuilt but, to only half its former grand size.

In the 1980s and 90s, Midland Metro trams were all the rage but, by 2000, instead of nearly half a dozen new tram lines to replace trains and buses, we had a measly ONE and that was almost entirely built on a rail line that should never have had its trains removed!  Even then, it was never extended to New St Station.  Extraordinary!

In this year of our Lord and Master, Cllr Albert Bore - 2014, we STILL have the six miles double track rail line through Kings Norton, Kings Heath and Moseley without stations or trains.  Nose to tail rush hour congestion alongside an empty double track rail line.  Scandalous!

In addition, we have the 13 miles of the Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall double track rail line also devoid of trains and stations.  It goes within half a mile of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, almost next to Dudley Zoo and Castle, very near to the Black Country Living Museum, links with the West Coast Main Line and our precious, one and only tram line at Wednesbury.  Empty of trains; not even any ghost trains.  Fifty years of unparalleled negligence and, after the stupidity of the line being closed in the first place!

The one triumph was the re-opening of the cross rail line from Longbridge to Four Oaks.  Amazing!  How was it done?  Nothing like it has ever been seen since by our pie in the sky transport experts.  But, today things have changed for ever by these same visionary transport officials.  We can now rest happy in our beds knowing that things are looking up - at long last!