Evidence to M 40 motorway service area public inquiry (Beaconsfield Liberal Democrats)

Beaconsfield Liberal Democrats <alan_oxley@hotmail.com>

Evidence to M 40 motorway service area public inquiry

June 18, 2003 8:00 PM
By Peter Chapman in Planning Inspector

I am Peter Chapman and I am a resident of Fulmer Drive, Gerrards Cross. I would like to address you about the footpaths which cross the proposed MSA, and which I use regularly. I speak as someone who is knowledgeable about footpaths. For 18 years I was managing director of Waymark Holidays Ltd, a company which organises walking holidays and during that time I researched footpaths in many different countries looking for the ones which our customers would enjoy using. I learnt in the course of my work that what our customers wanted were footpaths with attractive, open views, and not restricted too much by trees.

The proposed MSA would completely destroy the appeal of every possible footpath connection between the villages of Gerrards Cross and Hedgerley, including the most obvious route which is path 23 and path 13 from Hedgerley Lane in Gerrards Cross to Hedgerley Village.

If this MSA goes ahead, the residents of Gerrards Cross will be denied the pleasure of walking across open fields to the picturesque village of Hedgerley with its church, village pond and pub. This makes an agreeable Sunday morning or summer evening excursion for many local families.

You know that footpath 23 passes in a short tunnel under the M40. Clearly it is not a path of the highest scenic quality as you might enjoy if walking the Chiltern escarpment. However it is a local path, through open fields, which all of us here in the Colston Hall can enjoy, in most cases walking from our homes and leaving the car at home. This is why it is so important to us, living here in this corner between the M40 to the south and the M25 to the east and other suburban development to the north. Our escape route into the Green Belt to the west is all that we have left. The footpath amendments proposed by the appellants will not entice walkers. The prospect of crossing two service roads within the MSA and walking through an MSA car park will in fact probably deter walkers from using them at all. After all we are not using these footpaths simply because we need to get from Gerrards Cross to Hedgerley but because we want the pleasure of walking there.

I would also like to mention visitors who come to Gerrards Cross, sometimes by train, to enjoy these footpaths. They can walk from the centre of the village, across the A40 and then through Bulstrode Park on path15 to Hedgerley Lane and continue on path 23. A pleasant variation for the walk back is to pass by Hedgerley Church and return via Hedgerley Green on paths 16 and 15. There would not be the same pleasure in this because path 15 would just follow the boundary of the MSA.