Witchford - another long and strung-out Cambridgeshire village

I went to Witchford today. It's another long and strung-out Cambridgeshire village that suffered severely from increasing traffic and I recall Main Street being both noisy and quite dangerous. The village is now neatly by-passed. Consequently, the new housing developments that have arrived in recent years are benefiting from their close proximity to Ely and other good employment and travel opportunities as well as the relative peace and quiet of village life. The children are fortunate, too, for the local schools have an excellent reputation. I 'did' part of Main Street, West End Close, Barton Close, a large part of Clover End, Victoria Green and Granary End, as well as Church View, Bedwell Hey Lane, The Warren and The Grove. Amongst the many people I met was a gentleman who described himself as a 'die-hard' Conservative. By the end of the very pleasant conversation that I had with him and his wife, he was agreeing with me on almost every issue. Such is the value of serious canvassing.

A silly little bonus came my way. In front of one doorstep, either thrown down by a lazy distributor or thrown away in disgust by an irate householder, there lay a leaflet from one of my opponents. I picked it up - as one does with litter - and read it later. These people will have to do better. The 'facts' were out of date, the spelling was dreadful and the misuse of words was obvious. Not good - and not impressive at all.

Two invitations to General Election 'hustings' meetings have come in today. One was from the Revd. Stephen Talbot on behalf of Churches Together in Ely (CTiE) and the other from Jim Mullin, pastor of the Baptist Church at Haddenham, on behalf of the five churches in Haddenham and Wilburton. Dates have yet to be fixed, but I look forward to both meetings and have promised in each case to do my 'stuff'!

It would be good if either or both of these meetings were to draw a crowd such as appeared for the opening of the Haddenham Baptist Church in 1905 (I found this one on 'the net').