Microlight plans still up in the air
We have joined forces with local campaigners to fight the appeal by Mr Mark Fowler against Aylesbury Vale District Council’s refusal of planning permission for microlight aircraft flights at Bernwood Farm, Botolph Claydon in mid Bucks. The application is retrospective: Mr Fowler, the tenant of Bernwood Farm, is already flying aircraft there without consent. We…
Read MoreOutdoor enthusiasts tell Forestry Panel: protect access for future generations
Outdoor enthusiasts have come together to tell the Independent Forestry Panel that access must be ‘at the heart’ of England’s future forestry policy and that access must be protected and guaranteed for future generations. The Forest Access User Group, made up of 10 outdoor organizations, representing over 8 million people who regularly use woodland, have…
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Rodney Legg’s funeral, 30 July 2011
Surrounded by 80 of his friends, Rodney Legg was buried in a wildflower meadow on a Dorset hillside on Saturday 30 July. A few weeks before he died on 22 July he had chosen the best spot in the lovely Higher Ground Meadow, Corscombe, on the prow of the hill overlooking the Dorset and Somerset…
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Land saved at Herbrand Walk Beach, East Sussex
The Herbrand Walk Beach Preservation Society, a member of the OSS, has achieved registration of a bank of natural shingle, south of Herbrand Walk, Cooden, Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex, as a village green. The shingle is 463 metres in length by an average of 30 metres in width above the mean high-water mark. The land…
Read MoreWe fight glasshouse development across Essex footpath
We have opposed a massive glasshouse development across a public footpath, Nazeing footpath 10, in Essex. The society has written to Epping Forest District Council’s planning officer, objecting to the application from Valley Grown Nurseries, Paynes Lane, Nazeing, to erect 87,119 square metres of glasshouses plus an ancillary warehouse. We have pointed out that the…
Read MoreCumbrian activists threaten court action over blocked bridleway
As a last resort, the Redspearlands Footpath Group, a member of the Open Spaces Society, has served a notice on Cumbria County Council to open up the illegally blocked bridleway at Roewath Bridge at Stockdalewath, near Dalston, Carlisle. The path, which was first recorded as a right of way in 1950, has been illegally blocked…
Read MoreMirfield path reopened
John Fawcett, our local correspondent for Kirklees, has persuaded Kirklees Council to reopen a blocked footpath, Mirfield no 21. This is a popular, well-used path between Greenside Road and Wellhouse Lane in Mirfield, north-east of Huddersfield. The path was obstructed by an overhanging fence which made it difficult and dangerous to use. John had pressed…
Read MoreCome clean about blocked footpath
We have called on Brent Council’s planners to produce a supplementary paper for the council’s planning meeting on Tuesday (2 August) to report on the state of the illegally blocked footpath across the prestigious Northwick Park golf course. Their paper to the meeting gives councillors an update on planning issues at Northwick Park. It refers…
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Dartmoor at 60—unfinished business
‘We congratulate the Dartmoor National Park on its sixtieth birthday—but there is still plenty of unfinished business.’ So declared Kate Ashbrook, our general secretary at an event on Sunday (31 July) at Meldon reservoir, near Okehampton, organised by Devon Ramblers to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Dartmoor National Park. About 150 people attended. Kate…
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Cancer claims our former chairman Rodney Legg
Our former chairman Rodney Legg, the West Country’s rebel campaigner with a national reputation, has died of cancer, aged 64, on Friday (22 July). Rodney was born in Bournemouth on 18 April 1947. Well-known in the West Country for his numerous publications, on the history and landscape of Dorset in particular, he was also a…
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