Bridleways
By Christine Hardaker
It has been quite busy on the
bridleways front. The track over the land between Wrose Brow Road and Carr Lane
has been improved because with all the rain we have had this winter, the Carr
Lane end had become very boggy. It
was also due to the fact that, whilst the Wrose parish council had provided the
track and paid for the barriers to be erected to stop motorcyclists and quad
bikes, it had the unfortunate effect of concentrating all the hoof falls onto
one line which inevitably made a mess of the land. I remember when I used to
ride that route, it was always soft on that side but at least we were able to
skirt around the soft bits and therefore it never got that churned up. Unfortunately,
the mess hadn’t gone unnoticed and this
has put the mockers on the prospect of reopening a route over Wrose rec. I’ve
put in an appeal though, pleading that if the surfacing had been done at the
time the track and horse stiles were installed, the mess would have been
avoided, and so if this could be the plan for a route over the rec, it wouldn’t
get in a mess in the first place. I’m awaiting a response from the mostly horse
friendly local and parish councillors of Wrose,… fingers crossed.
There have been three building
applications in our area of which two of them have attracted many objections.
The first one was Cote Farm, on Leeds Road where the developers had submitted plans to build up to two hundred
and seventy houses. They are proposing to build them on most of the fields used
for grazing the horses at the Cote Farm Livery yard, leaving not enough land
for them to continue a viable business. This means those owners paying for
livery to keep their horses at the farm will have to find another yard. It also means the owners of the business will
lose their livelihood and will have to seek other employment. There had already
been a campaign organised last year involving local people and the local Liberal Democrat councillors. I had
also met with our Rights of Way officer and we discussed the impact the
development would have on the bridleway which would traverse right through the
site. We discussed the safety of the people having to lead their horses to and
from the fields because their grazing would now be at the other end of the
site! The planners obviously have no idea how much of a problem that will
cause, especially in winter when it is dark and in bad weather when you have to
lead a half a ton of horse that is hungry and cold and just wants to get into
it’s stable, and would possibly be impatient when having to stop at the road
side to wait for passing cars coming home from work! Also it will be a nightmare in the case of
icy and snowy conditions having to cross slippery icy road surfaces instead of bridleway tracks all the way.
On the 15th March, a protest march was organised to show the
strength of feeling against the development and I thought it important that
there should be a horse taking part because it very much affects horse owners,
and I find that horses tend to attract a lot of attention. Shame we couldn’t
find a few steady calm horses at short noticed to lead the walk but in the end,
I took my mini mare along - well she is a miniature horse, and she was impeccably
behaved even with about one hundred and fifty people around her, mostly
carrying banners and placards and families pushing prams. I thought it was
noteworthy that I was soon joined by two young girls who chose to walk most of
the route with my mini mare and just proved to me that keeping horses in our
midst is very important for the younger generation. They will possibly grow up
in our village, and if all the land disappears under houses, they would not see any horses unless they
purposely travelled to the outskirts of the area. Horse riding is a very popular sport with
young girls and this government is trying to find ways to get them to go out
and exercise more, and horse riding is a very good form of exercise for all the
family, for all ages and both sexes. The increase in popularity of horse riding
between 1999 and 2006 rose by 44%. A third of those are under the age of
fifteen, 38% are between are aged between 25 and 44.1.2 million horses kept by private owners
are used for leisure and they need to
be kept within communities because the vast majority of people are very pleased
to see horses when they are being
ridden out. They need somewhere safe to ride and many of our rights of
way are disjointed and end up on a main road with nowhere to go from there
except ride along the road. The local routes have been narrowed down to just a
few and it gets boring doing the same old routes, especially if you ride
several times a week.
So the other development is on Fagley
Quarry which has also received publicity in the T&A. A big campaign has
been mounted because the application entails demolishing Throstles Nest riding
school! This would be a tragic loss of another riding school in Bradford. When
I was a child there were several riding schools that I could choose from where
I could go to learn to ride and how to look after a pony. Now there are only a
handful in the whole of Bradford and you need to travel to the outskirts to
find them.
At the end of February, ten horse
riders from Throstles Nest farm made the journey into the centre of Bradford to
hand in three hundred objections against the development to councillors at the
Town Hall. There has also been a petition to sign against the closure on Facebook but unfortunately I haven’t got an update on
how many signatures they have up
to date, perhaps someone can update me for next month.
There is another application in our
area which I haven’t the space to cover this month. I’ll have more news next
month.
If
you have any horsey news or problems for me, contact me on 07739708727 or
email:christinehardaker@supanet.com
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