Our main focus over the last month has been to put pressure on the various bodies involved to push for the footpath up-grade for the path from Marden Farm to Bentley Lane to be a dual use walking and cycling path. Our reasoning is that it offers the villages of Stockley and Heddington, as well as several estates in the area, a route to and from Calne centre without needing to use the A4. The cost of making a footpath will be significant already, but making the additional improvements at the same time seems more cost effective than changing it at a later date. This has involved researching various documents that make reference to the path and also to make a proposal that could reduce some of the costs.
In addition, we have been discussing with the Calne Town Council possible locations for the Beat the Street project later this year and liaising with Wiltshire Council about a possible survey of users of the Cycle track to Chippenham. Over the next few weeks we will continue to look at the possibility of setting up a Calne based walking group to reduce journeys to other places for walking – we have secured two free places with Wiltshire for leader training.
We are supporting the audit of footpaths but are trying to ensure this is done to collect information in the most useful format to be used by the relevant organisations who want to make improvements.