
'Our natural environment provides opportunities for improving health and wellbeing and we will work hard to maximise those opportunities and to ensure that we protect our natural resources, striving to become carbon net zero and addressing biodiversity loss.
Most importantly we are committed to working to ensure that Westmorland and Furness is a great place to live, work and thrive.'
19th July, the hottest day so far in 2024. I set out about 8.30 am to walk up to the Brigsteer Bridge. Bright cumulous cloud patterned the sky and the swifts were shrill. Impossible to shut out man-made noise. Heavy vehicles were up and down the road to the building site at Brigsteer Rise. The track to Stainbank Green was loud with noise from a fleet of JCBs on the latest development over the wall. Well before I reached stout barriers blockading the bridge I heard the roar of traffic on the A591 below, The Kendal Bypass. Now, it's impossible to cross the bridge to seek inspiration, peace and solitude. We are told there’s an order allowing the bridge to be closed until 2026. Perhaps longer, who knows? For all who depend on a long-established safe and direct route to Kendal Race Course, Scout Scar, and the Lake District National Park this is not ' a good place to live and thrive.
With traffic diversions necessitating longer journeys becoming carbon net zero is less likely.
That bridge is infrastructure, a key amenity. It represents freedom and independence, an escape to the countryside. And it’s closed, indefinitely, to walkers, runners and cyclists. I urge Westmorland and Furness Council to act, to validate their Council Plan. With two Kendal bridges closed its claims are a world away from reality.
'Our natural environment provides opportunities for improving health and wellbeing'. That's why we chose to live here. We need to live and thrive here and now, in the present, not in some unforeseeable and uncertain future. We need Westmorland and Furness Council to take urgent action. and find a way to restore a lost amenity.