A parish council with £7.2 million in the bank has voted to spend up to £3,000 on a specially-designed gate to stop a pony and trap using a woodland footpath.
The Parish Council has a lot of choice about what to spend it on – most of the money comes from ‘CIL’ contributions from developers.
A proportion of these have to be spent within a certain time of the development going ahead.
The Parish Council Chairman, David Cornish said: “It’s a nice problem to have”.
The gate was proposed as a solution to combat what the council considers ‘anti-social’ behaviour in a country pathway in Finchampstead village, where young boys ‘joy-ride’ their quad-bikes and a pony and trap along an off-road track which the parish has recently invested in improving, but which keeps them safe from nearby high-speed traffic.
One project the council is very proud of already completing with its CIL money is the re-surfacing of a historic road called ‘Longwater Lane’ through the woodland called Fleet Copse in Finchampstead Village.
The road once crossed the river Blackwater in a ford, and re-emerged in neighbouring Eversley in Hampshire. There is still the stump of a road called Longwater Lane in Eversley, but they no longer connect up.
In the eyes of the Parish and Borough councils, the historic Longwater Lane is now called ‘Footpath 33’, and it still disappears into the woods, with a bright orange iron-rich stream springing from a long-hidden water source bubbling along one side of the pathway.
The road has long been invaded by gnarly stumps and tree roots making it difficult to pass, but with the wide new surface it is now passable by foot, bike, or even a horse and carriage, and the intention is to shortly reclassify it as a bridlepath.
The road has the appearance of a historic turnpike through the forest where you might meet a stage coach taking aristocrats to their country house, farmers bringing their vegetables to market or a highwayman with a mask and a pistol demanding ‘stand and deliver’.
Another form of transport which wouldn’t be out of place on such a historic road is a pony and trap, and delightfully a pony and trap is sometimes seen in Longwater Lane as a nearby family owns one, and children have been seen driving the pony up a nearby cul-de-sac called Corfield Close, through a navigable part of Longwater Lane and along Finchampstead Village. They also use quad bikes.
Unfortunately, Finchampstead Parish Councillors are less enchanted than some to see the pony around Finchampstead Village. With money to spare they have decided a good use would be to spend some on a special gate, blocking ponies, traps and quadbikes from entering footpath 33.
According to parish councillors, the total width of the gate will need to be in excess of 20 feet, and will have a special design to allow horses to step over, but block quad bikes and carriages pulled by the horses from entering the historic road.
The council would also like to arrange for some enforcement to deter youngsters from ‘joy-riding’ with their ponies and quadbikes. According to councillors the first stage is that a road traffic order could allow police to confiscate any motor vehicles found on the track.
The second stage is that the machine would be taken away and crushed. It was not stated how the enforcement could apply to ponies.
