Access Neglect

While good native wildlife-friendly vegetation gets attacked on Blacka, access arrangements are seriously neglected.

The small main car park has had no investment and is quite inadequate for its role. Another car park, at Piper House,  was closed off to the public by Highways Department with no alternative provided and no evidence the managers at SWT or the council were bothered at all. The tarmac on the ramp entrance to the remaining car park on Hathersage Road needs repair and shows no sign of being on the agenda of either SWT or SCC. The ground is uneven and to one side is seriously churned up by vehicles because there’s not enough room at busy times such as weekends. It has been used as a dumping area, often the fate of sites that look uncared for, and in the last few days a pile of old bricks and demolition rubble has appeared occupying one parking space.

The main bridleway alongside to the west of Blacka is regularly flooded even when there has not been weeks of wet weather. At the moment it could be called a lake district and the land to the side is a mud-patch where people have avoided the deep water.

Other parts of the bridleway are depressingly muddy when wet and hazardous when icy; they also suffer from increasing mountain bike use which contributes to widening. When, after years of neglect a major and expensive repair job is undertaken, as at Wimble Holme Hill last year, the workers go away leaving unsightly piles of material conspicuous to all visitors. Gateways are swamps. Whenever there is a period of wet weather public rights of way become a soggy obstacle course. Needless to say in the last weeks the visitor experience has been such as to appeal only to the most determined of walkers.

Yet when the managers send people out to do maintenance work what is their priority? Of course it’s cutting down trees. Why would that be?  The obvious answer is that you can get grants for covering the ground with cow excrement, erecting barbed wire and killing native trees and other wildlife. 

So the Local Access Forum is on the job then, is it? Erm, well not that I've seen. Perhaps they are too busy telling us that there's a crying need for cows**t around here?