When I joined Peakirk Parish Council in May 2006, as the new member, I was given the job of trying to find a solution to the perennial problem of lack of safe footpaths leading to and from the village. We had had several complaints about the unsafe roads and the danger to cyclists and horse riders and my job was to try and find out how we could change this.
I downloaded the Right of Way (RofW) Action Plan from the City Council and contacted Steve Horner who kindly came out to Peakirk and walked several of the local footpaths with me. I joined the Local Access Forum (LAF) in October 2007 after speaking with Bob Smith at a Natural Networks Meeting and found that they were very supportive of our demands for more safe access to the countryside around us.
We discussed the support of the LAF at our Parish Council meeting in January 2008 and after speaking to several other parish councillors at various meetings held over that period our parish clerk approached other local parish clerks to see if there was any interest in our proposal to meet and talk about problems we all faced with local access to the countryside. This eventually resulted in our first meeting of the Footpath Working Group for rural North West Peterborough on 6th May 2008 at Peakirk Village Hall
The Agenda was as follows:
1. To welcome all representatives and elect a chairman and secretary.
2. To decide on a regular venue and dates for further meetings.
3. To look at the present provision of footpaths/bridleways in the NW Peterborough area using existing maps. [Please bring any maps of your parish which may be helpful].
4. To discuss the technical differences between footpaths and bridleways and how appropriate they are to our plan.
5. To discuss possibility of forming a comprehensive NW Peterborough footpath/bridleway system. How realistic is it and how can we go about it?
6. Money. Is there any financial or other help available and how can we access it?
7. Is there anybody else we need to include in our working group to make our plans more feasible?
We were keen to encourage Steve Horner, the Countryside Access Officer from PCC to attend and offer his advice.
From this beginning we formed our first committee, Henry Clark is our Chairman and I am the Secretary.
Our next meeting, after reminders sent via e-mail, we attracted 10 people from 5 villages including Deeping Gate, Werrington, Newborough, Glinton and Peakirk, so we decided that we should ignore the City Council boundary and stick to the geographical area where we live and walk. We changed our name to Northern Footpath Forum to reflect this, although some people still think we do guided walks in the Northumbria moors! Efforts to find a more representative name have so far failed. We now meet on the second Tuesday of the month in the Village hall at Peakirk.
One of our primary aims is to map the existing footpaths and find out where we need to link them together. We have been keen to pull in different expertise from people we know and now have an expert map maker and a leaflet designer amongst our number. We started as a Parish Council group, but quickly expanded to include anybody with an interest in the local countryside.
Some people come to every meeting, some drop in and out when an item interests them. We have had visits from Lincolnshire RofW W officers, the Green Wheel Officer and the Estates Manager of the Environment Agency.
We have found out that Newborough is the only village we know of in the area where it is impossible to walk out of on a footpath!
We have an ear to the ground on the upgrading of the Spalding railway as this cuts straight through our area and will have a dramatic effect on keeping the access open between the two halves.
We are actively seeking a bridge over the River Welland to allow local people to walk to Deeping Lakes instead of driving 4 miles to reach a spot 100yards away on the other side of the river and to create a circular walk for people in Deeping.We are now trying to put together a leaflet publicising a local walk made possible by the generosity of a local landowner and the negotiating skills of Steve Horner.
We are amazed how much we have achieved in the past 10 months and how enthusiastic people have become when they can see a positive way to influence decisions that affect them locally. The group has also become an informal discussion forum for local problems and has helped communications between local Parish Councillors facing similar challenges.
We are very grateful for the continued support of the LAF and Steve Horner in particular who is always willing to spend time looking at the viability of our plans both on the ground and on paper and it is unlikely we could flourish without his backing.
For more details, contact Sally Jackson jackson.sallyann@googlemail.com 01733 253483
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