WORK on the Greenway - a new pedestrians' / cyclists' pathway linking Crewe and Nantwich - is making progress (the published finishing date is November 2011). And some of my fears when I wrote the original Letter from Nantwich have proved to be unfounded.

   For instance, the Greenway does a neat diversion around the toilets (actually on the Consultation Plan issued by Cheshire East Council in September 2010 if I had looked closely enough) so we will be keeping one of the three serving the town after all.

   [UPDATE: It was later closed and is now a Town Council storage building.] 

  The trees adjacent to this facility (below, right) have been neatly bypassed - and so will not need to be felled - by squeezing the Greenway into the space between the trees and the fencing of the former tennis courts. The area of the sporting facility also now includes an imitation football pitch.   

   A feature of the Greenway work are safety islands in the centre of the roads (that's one of the two Barony Road ones, pictured above, centre).

l This update prompted website visitor "A  Regular Cyclist" to comment: "I would have thought it would have made more sense for the cycle route to have crossed the Barony by the traffic lights at Middlewich Road end and then gone down Davenport Avenue and along Manor Road to the Riverside, than come in to Beam Street. Surely they are not going to take bikes through the middle of town are they? I speak as a regular cyclist!"

   His comment prompted me to have a further look at a Connect 2 publication issued by Cheshire East Council last year and it does show that the route to Nantwich Riverside does, indeed, go down Davenport Avenue, etc!

   A footnote with the map says "Element 5: Greenway and residential roads from the north side of Nantwich bypass to Riverside at Mill Island, including controlled crossings of the bypass and Middlewich Road and an uncontrolled crossing of Barony Road".

   In fact, according to that leaflet, the Greenway reaches the Riverside somewhere around the  

swimming baths but, then again, Mill Island is off the bottom of the picture. [In the end, the Greenway didn't go down Davenport Avenue, and the Barony Road section only goes as far as Volunteer Fields. That's it above left].

Pictures: left, the Nantwich section of the Greenway as it runs alongside Beam Street. The patch of soil to the left of the new pathway, as seen in the picture, has been sown with grass seed and will eventually match the verge and the parkland.

   Smaller images: two more views, in Barony Road, of the Greenway work.

A tree-lined section of the route

Intruding on the Greenway

THIS section of the Greenway, a tree-lined route on the Park View edge of Barony Park, was constructed at the end of June 2011. There are trees along other sections of the route.

   And to avoid any misunderstanding about cyclists "riding on the footpath" a blue sign (situated just out of the main picture, here) makes it clear that the Greenway is for pedestrians and cyclists.

   I understand that this section of the park was near to the location of prefabs (pre-fabricated, single-storey buildings) built just after the Second World War but I am not sure whether the trees were in the gardens of the temporary homes or were planted when the prefabs were demolished. (Prefabs in Manor Road North were standing long after the Park View ones disappeared.) 

I HAVE seen roadways marked with white or yellow spray paint, indicating a potential trip hazard, but this is the first time I have seen a footpath marked to show the presence of weeds.

   The white circles - and the weeds -  popped up on the Beam Street, Nantwich, section of the Greenway a short time after the pedestrian and cycle way was laid.

    I am not sure whether the weeds are particularly robust and have forced their way through the Greenway, or if their seeds fell into a depression in the Tarmacadam and the roots found soil and water below.

Confrontation on the Greenway | The original letter | Letters index page