Slash and burn

I'm ranting again and this time I mean it. I got home on Friday afternoon to find a note through the door from the local Sustrans person, informing us that on Sunday a group of volunteers would be meeting across the road to do 'maintenance work' on the cycle trail. The last time this bunch of slash-and-burners turned up, the area looked devastated for months and it still hasn't grown back properly.

We knew when we bought the house that the cycle trail was going to be built over the road in what was then a lush, green tangle of trees and bushes. It seemed a positive factor - naively I assumed that Sustrans would be in favour of countryside, and greenery generally. After all, the whole point of the organisation is to build off-road trails for the public to enjoy when they want to get out of the town and away from traffic. It never occurred to me they would be obsessed with turning the stretch of pleasantly overgrown land opposite our house into some kind of sanitised suburban park, completely stripped of any vegetation between the trees.

Conveniently no phone number was provided so I hit the internet and the phone book - both people concerned were, equally conveniently, out of the office, but I did manage to leave a message for one of them with her colleague. In an attempt not to sound completely unhinged I asked for some new planting, but goodness knows what got passed on - ' a nasty piece of work in Ruddlemoor objects to your nice volunteers clearing the path' probably.

We decided to go out for the day today, as the last thing I wanted was to go over and 'discuss' it in front of an interested crowd, all believing they are doing good for the community by spending their Sunday defacing an inoffensive stretch of path.

Sure enough, we arrived back to find everything levelled once again and the path completely open to the road. I find this utterly bizarre, both as a user of the trail and as a resident. Which is more pleasant - to walk between banks of green, leafy vegetation which blocks out sight and some sound of passing traffic, or in full view and earshot of it?

I realise this may sound pretty minor stuff, so why does it get my back up so much? Firstly because we, whose environment is adversely affected, are the last to know - I have discovered that for the last few weeks Sustrans have been putting invitations in the local press for people to come and help. Then to have absolutely no control over what happens just outside my property. And finally to think that all those people are now congratulating themselves on being so public-spirited. If they are really so concerned about the environment, they could go and pick up all the rubbish flung out of souped-up old Peugeots the moment the local petrolheads finish their drive-thru McDonalds. Or campaign to reduce the speed limit on this road, where yet another driver was killed last week, his car on the wrong side of the road,and which is now referred to in the local press as an 'accident blackspot'. How would they feel, these marvellous volunteers who no doubt live in wonderfully leafy surroundings, if I turned up outside their garden fence and started hacking down all the vegetation they can see from their windows?

So you could say I am not happy. At the moment I intend to get back on the phone tomorrow and put my case. Sometimes I simmer down and decide to let it pass. This time I think not.