WHALEY WAILS

This site is where you can post your comments about Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire.

It would be nice to get as many different points of view as possible.

Whaley Ski Jump.

The Hockerley Tunnel footpath is a Right of Way (No. 13). A zigzag route was laid out so that wheelchairs and pushchairs could be used. This was done under a Section 106 Planning Agreement with the developers, Persimmons, who paid for the work. Now those same developers have put in a ski jump, which we can assume they also paid for. You should go and see the reality for wheelchairs and pushchairs. Of course you can no longer get under the tunnel since the flood because of the moguls so it perhaps does not matter anyway. Then again maybe it does matter that DCC and HPBC use our money to produce magazines telling us how much they are doing for us, especially if we use wheelchairs or pushchairs or walk.

The British Waterways Wall.

It is a year since Tesco’s opened and there is still no way through the wall from the towpath to the carefully graded wheelchair- and pushchair-friendly slope provided by Tesco’s. So people have to walk along the A5004 which has a speed limit of 60mph and a footpath with a width of 3 feet. This is dangerous. One person can not pass another without one having to step into the roadway. People ought to be able to walk along the canal towpath which is a public right of way. They would be safe. However, British Waterways, a nationalised industry, presumably charged with supporting Government policy, has not just refused to put a hole in their wall to allow wheelchair, pushchair and pedstrian access to Tesco’s but has actually erected a lengthy, high steel barrier to prevent access. The planning authority, High Peak Borough Council, also Labour-controlled, has done nothing about it. But we do still have to read magazines, produced at our expense, telling us how HPBC, etc. are so kind to wheelchair-users, etc..

Long Hill Roadworks

After so many years of waiting we should be so grateful that DCC has done the repairs to the A5004. How many more years will it be before all the signs and other roadworks rubbish are completely removed?

More Long Hill Roadworks

Further up the A5004, just as one leaves Whaley, there is the road down to Fernilee Reservoir. This is in a state of disrepair such as to make it suitable for a 2CV or 4by4 test track. Whose responsibility? We can bet no one will accept responsibility. So visitors to our local beauty spot will be less than impressed with our area.

Even more about the A5004 and DCC and British Waterways

Some years ago there was an attempt by DCC to block the pavement on the A5004 as one left the area of the canal basin and headed North. Presumably the signs and barriers were put in place because cracks had appeared in the pavement. People forced their way past the barriers and signs and eventually the mess disappeared. People had been advised to use the other footpath to bypass the problem. One may safely assume that no one was daft enough to follow such advice because there is no record of anyone being killed on this very dangerous bend. However, after some years, the entire footway fell into the canal. Nothing had happened for…? Is it a year? Two years? Both DCC, as the highways authority, and British Waterways, as owners of the canal, would appear to be involved. Neither is noted for its rapid response: BW took about two years to repair the Toddbrook Dam wooden bridge: DCC are stlll working on Long Hill. When will the entrance to the Whaley Basin and the footway be repaired?

Yet still more on the A5004

There are rumours that DCC is proposing putting traffic lights at the Canal Street/Market Street junction. Why do they hate us so much? What did we ever do to them?

The Bridge

Which bridge? THE Whaley bridge! The one we have not got!

Rumour has it that British Waterways could own the 19 century railway bridge from Bingswood Avenue into the Bingswood Industrial Estate. There may be some truth in this since, at nationalisation, British Waterways was given some of the assets of the railway companies which had owned the canals. Perhaps it was given the old railway bridge.

A proper survey of this bridge could condemn it. It was built for railway wagons and not 44 ton lorries. It was built over a hundred years ago. This would be a disaster for Whaley.

The second bridge across the Goyt is vital for the future of Whaley. It would solve the problem of the Canal Street 180 degree turn for 44 ton HGVs. It would free up the area around Whaley’s most distinguished building, the Grade 2 Star Transfer shed, owned by British Waterways. It would enable the Bingswood Estate to generate more employment.

However High Peak Borough Council refused permission for the larger store wanted by Tesco’s, so Tesco’s did not have to fund the second bridge. They have to put in £100,000 if a bridge is built within the next few years. Tesco’s will soon apply to extend their store and then we shall see a triumph of Labour policy-making: the store Tesco’s always wanted but no second bridge.

HPBC and DCC refuse to be lead partners in building the second bridge. Nothing will happen until Tesco’s are free to pay nothing. Both HPBC and DCC, under Labour control, expect Whaley Bridge Town Council to take the lead. This is plainly silly. WBTC is far too small for the task.

It is also curious that the owners of the businesses and land at Bingswood do not offer to help provide the finance for something which will be of great benefit to them.

Grade II* Transfer Shed

British Waterways again. BW has been promising for years to talk to the Town Council about the future of the town’s most important building. It has not done so. It did put out a leaflet suggesting the Transfer Shed could become a pub or restaurant. BW does not send anyone to meetings of the Whaley Regeneration Partnership.

WBTC has a policy of making the building the centrepiece of the conservation area by having a dual-purpose heritage centre: for the canal system and for Whaley life. The former would interest visitors and the latter the community.

Of course there is also the Cromford & High Peak Railway leading from the shed.

A casual visitor, observing the usual very inappropriate limestone chippings and the dreadsful concrete bollards and kerbstones, would conclude that High Peak Borough Council is low on aesthetic sense. This is also true of BW who insisted that one corner of a Grade II * building should be painted white. The mind boggles at the idea that English Heritage countenanced this.

Dog Mess

High Peak Borough Council again. Once upon a time dog faeces were allowed to be recycled by slugs, snails, etc. and the weather. Now with the fullest approval of the great majority of the voters HPBC has acted. The Goyt Valley is filling with plastic bags full of the brown stuff. They are piled at the base of trees. They are flung into trees. It takes years for plastic to rot so we shall all be able to look forward to seeing more and more of these bags for longer and longer.

We shall all be able to read pamphlets, produced by HPBC at our expense, which urge us to biodegrade as much as possible, recycle as much as possible and send as little as possible for burial in expensive landfill sites.

One is told of the terrible danger of handling dog muck. So many decades after ceasing to have any interest in handling the stuff – an urge normally confined to the under twos – grown men and women are wrapping the stuff in plastic bags and desecrating the environment for no normal person is going to carry around in either hand or pocket a bag of this stuff; particularly when he discovers that his fingers smell of the stuff which means that particles of it are adhering to his hands and, of course, to the inside of his nose.