New Reach Lode Bridge opened - hang the expense!

The new bridge over Reach Lode has been opened. Pictures have appeared in the local papers. Here is one I took earlier.

The pictures in the papers have appeared as has a letter that I wrote, as follows:

"Dear Editor,

I missed the 'community picnic' organised by the National Trust to mark the opening of the new bridge over Reach Lode. Whilst I have no objection to increased access to our fine food-growing Fens, I can't see why it was necessary to construct such a huge and expensive span just to bring people from Anglesey Abbey to Wicken Fen. The job could have been done differently and at considerably less cost.

But what is money to the National Trust? It falls off Government trees every time some is demanded.

The Trust has recently been granted permission to 're-wet' (that's a fancy word for flooding) 200 more acres of Grade 1 farm land at Burwell. A Trust officer has admitted that the area of our Fens to be 're-wetted' or flooded in the name of the so-called 'Wicken Vision' is 3,000 to 4,000 acres. This, of course, is the lower-lying land which happens also to be the very best and most peat-rich.

The Trust seems to be good at growing ragwort, stinging nettles and thistles on land that it already controls. Farming matters in the Fens. I also assert that with our population growing exponentially, our best food-growing land ought not to be lost, either to water or to weeds.

Yours sincerely,

Geoffrey Woollard."