Hyden Farm to go Free Range??

A sad state of affairs. It seems that Hyden Farm might drop it's organic status and become free range. In an interview with the BBC, Richard Jones today indicated that organic feed was becoming to expensive and people were buying cheaper produce.

For those who are unfamiliar with Hyden Farm, it is very close to the 'Bat and Ball' pub and Hambledon cricket ground, about a miles walk from Clanfield. You can see the chickens and ducks from the road side.

I sincerely hope that Richard doesn't have to change. We need to put a higher priority and make food a bigger part of our budgets, it is far more important than other trivial stuff.

Support your local farm, buy local and organic, you can't get much better than that!

Hyden Farm


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Grainger downgrades Waterlooville MDA

The local paper has reported that Grainger is now going to build 180 homes on the farm land near Waterlooville, instead of the 1,500 or so they planned.

However this may not be as good as it first seems. Firstly they seem to state that this smaller scale project is purely while the market is in such a poor state, or in other words when it picks up, they will build more homes.

The other issue is that the smaller number of homes means that the 'public' buildings and infrastructure won't be built and any development will now be piecemeal.

But on the positive side, by the time the market does pick up (we are in a depression, don't delude yourself that this is a little recession!), the environmental standards for building will be much higher. So hopefully if the 1,500 homes are built eventually, then they will be of a higher eco standard.

All in all though, it would be best if the land remained green.

Be first to see The Age of Stupid

The Age of Stupid will premiere in Portsmouth on 15th March at the Vue cinema in Portsmouth. Starring Pete Postlethwaite, it is a movie not to be missed.

The Age of Stupid

Wimpey and Bryant destruction

Another set of before and after photos taken of Hambledon Road.

2007:

Feb 2009:

We could take our own bags

Waterloovile pedestrian access

Over the years, access to Waterlooville by pedestrians and cyclists approaching via the Hambledon Road route have gradually eroded. Havant council are largely to blame by putting car drivers first and neglecting the needs of pedestrians and cyclists. This is typified by the retail park that now spreads across the main route for all pedestrians and cyclists that want to enter Waterlooville via the dual carriageway underpass.

Before the dual carriageway was built, we had a public road (Hambledon Road) that ran straight into Waterlooville, but the council through its incompetence decided to sell the land to private investors a number of years ago and the dual carriageway/bypass was built for motor vehicle traffic.



In this photo I have drawn the path of the original Hambledon Road, which was long and straight for most of its length. The kink in the red line indicates the steep hill the old road climbed to get into Waterlooville.

To the right of the old road there were fields and a hedgerow once defined the border between road and fields. So basically Halfords and other retail units on that side are where the fields were located.

What can be seen from the photo is the horrendous situation we have today for pedestrians and cyclists. Remember what you see is the main highway into Waterlooville for anyone that wants to cycle or walk. Car drivers have their own dual carriageway and the cars can park here as well. Pedestrians have to negotiate about 7 'junctions' in the car park all within a few metres of each other.



Here we can see the new Zebra crossing markings being abused by a typical driver. There are about 7 of these crossings and vehicles regularly stop across the cycle and pedestrian path.

If a pedestrian or cyclist did this in the middle of a busy road, they would get a lot of abusive language aimed at them from arrogant drivers.

Note that another van is also stopped on a Zebra crossing further up.



On the day that these photos were taken, about 5 vehicles (within a 5 minute period) abused the highway code by stopping on the Zebra crossings. More vehicles stopped on the path than they did before the markings went down!

The highway code 192 states:

"In queuing traffic, you should keep the crossing clear"

Also 191 states:

"You MUST NOT park on a crossing or in the area covered by the zig-zag lines."

Clearly we have queueing traffic here and the code is being abused.