I am not sure why (must be something to do with Councill's budget and covid spending) but recently all the paths around Northolt and Uxbridge have almost been taken back by nature.
I have my favorite path but recently it became so outgrown by plants that in some parts became dangerous as the traffic passing by is so close that one mistake when you try to avoid branches could cost you a lot more than few scratches.
I bought special garden scissors and decided to clear them up for my own and other fellow cyclist's benefit.
forbas wrote: ↑11 Jun 2021, 1:18pmI am not sure why (must be something to do with Councill's budget and covid spending) but recently all the paths around Northolt and Uxbridge have almost been taken back by nature.
Pretty sure it's lots of sun peppered with quite a lot of rain recently. All of nature near me is doing well too!
I have a shared use path locally that leads down from the ring road to the valley floor. It is partly tree-lined and gets rather slippery. About 18 months ago I cleared the vegetation back and swept the surface clear. That improved it for most of the year but it’s looking like it needs it again.
I’m pretty sure the council were just going to overlook it. The furthest point of the path is across open ground and I didn’t clear that because it wasn’t slippery. It’s rather narrow and overgrown now but nothing has been done anywhere on the path since I did my bit.
The older I get the more I’m inclined to act my shoe size, not my age.
forbas wrote: ↑11 Jun 2021, 1:18pm
I am not sure why (must be something to do with Councill's budget and covid spending) but recently all the paths around Northolt and Uxbridge have almost been taken back by nature.
I have my favorite path but recently it became so outgrown by plants that in some parts became dangerous as the traffic passing by is so close that one mistake when you try to avoid branches could cost you a lot more than few scratches.
I bought special garden scissors and decided to clear them up for my own and other fellow cyclist's benefit.
peetee wrote: ↑11 Jun 2021, 10:49pm
I have a shared use path locally that leads down from the ring road to the valley floor. It is partly tree-lined and gets rather slippery. About 18 months ago I cleared the vegetation back and swept the surface clear. That improved it for most of the year but it’s looking like it needs it again.
I’m pretty sure the council were just going to overlook it. The furthest point of the path is across open ground and I didn’t clear that because it wasn’t slippery. It’s rather narrow and overgrown now but nothing has been done anywhere on the path since I did my bit.
Looks to me like your path needs you again. Keep up a good work.
Around here, there seems to have been an increase in the amount of litter, including fly-tipping. At first, I thought this was caused by the covid-related closure of municipal rubbish sites but they have now been re-opened a while, although they are now subject to complications such as an appointments system. When I'm out on foot I generally take a shopping bag - an extra one if I'm shopping - to collect some of that litter but there's a limit.
Removed a large rock sticking half out of the ground, then filled the hole it left.
We use the track most days so it was partly done for selfish reasons.
Well done. The lack of maintenance is deliberate as by reducing cutting or only doing when someobe complains enables the council's to meet their cuts in grants from central government. My local council's reward for being efficient was to be told to save another £20 million. Having the Transport Secretary as our MP makes zero difference!
Good to see so many of you is actually trying to help out as well.
Well done.
Re: the councils cost cutting and receiving bonuses on positive budget variances... I think we can try to minimise the scale of it by reporting literally everything. So the more complaints they get the more they do hence won't save and won't receive the bonus based on undelivering public service - I know, I know, I got carried away bit here but if we don't report the problem they won't know or pretend there isn't one.
In the local woods there is a couple of local paths I use when walking the dogs. They have muddy sections during the wet half of the year. I have sorted it by every so often taking around 10kg of gravel in a rucsac and dropping it in the worst bit. After doing this for a while the result is dry feet and a natural looking path as the gravel was tramped into the mud and covered by last autumns leaf drop.
A bonus is that the formery 30ft wide area of mud where everything was trampled as everyone tried to find the driest way through has started recovering as there is an obvious dry route through.
It gets heavy traffic as a school route but is not public land so would not have been omproved any other way. The owner is an absentee landlord whose only interest is nelecting the land long enough to get planning permission for houses. They do zero maintainance.
Other locals regularly pick the litter the schoolkids drop. During the summer holidays the litter drops to
zero.
