AS someone who has reduced an annual car mileage of 15,000 to below 3,000 by switching to cycling and public transport for work and leisure, I am puzzled and dispirited at reading your report of opposition to a Wye Valley cycle route – or indeed any attempt to make it easier for people to make my sort of choice about how to get from A to B.
Apart from the daily toll of death and injury with its accompanying damage of grief and massive health, legal and insurance costs, our auto-dependent society has blighted thousands of square miles of countryside and continues to threaten many more areas of outstanding natural beauty with noise pollution while new metalled surfaces to serve the parking needs of car-borne visitors continue to "nibble" their way into the Forest – and now on the eve of a world conference to address the devastating impact of our personal greed for energy on our childrens' and grandchildrens' environment, you report "fears" of a cycle path.
In opposing any part of one of the most far-sighted of projects for a nationwide network for sustainable transport for work and leisure, the turkeys of Llandogo and their allies – many helpless to reach their second homes without their fossil-fuel guzzling cars – are voting to retain Christmas. And yes, I also have had a second home here for over 20 years – but it's up a hill you can only climb on foot and I long for a means to get to it from Birmingham via a safe combination of rail stations at Lydney or Chepstow and car free cycle paths. – Simon Baddeley, Lydbrook.