Has anybody realised that by the end of this year, or soon after, access to Pye’s Hall will be denied? This is due to the grandly named ‘Donna Nook Manage Realignment Scheme’.
It’s probably common knowledge that there is a plan to breach the sea defences north of Donna Nook, allowing farmland within the current dyke to become saltmarsh, creating a new habitat for birds and other wildlife, compensating for its loss elsewhere. This is part of a master plan to protect areas from Goole to Saltfleet, from occasional flooding and to allow for the natural rise in the sea level. Consultation has been ongoing since, I think, 2005, but having just moved to Lincolnshire at the end of 2006, I knew nothing of these plans until the latter half of last year.
Now I don’t want to get involved in the merits of agricultural land versus bird habitat, but I do want to know who, if anyone, has been consulted about the extinguishment of the Public Right of Way between the Stonebridge car park to Pye’s Hall and beyond. I’m awaiting a reply from the local Ramblers’ Association reps who ought to have been notified, but if any of you birders out there have any information about this path closure, I’d be grateful to hear about it.
Like many other Lincs birders, the walk along the track from Donna Nook to Pye’s Hall, scanning the bushes and trees for that elusive ‘lifer’ has consumed many hours that ought to have been better spent decorating, gardening, or even, perish the thought, working! But what a tragedy if we are restricted to a new, sterile path, inland. The trees and bushes will still be there (how often will the land flood in our lifetime, even if the sea defences are breached?) but we will be birding a kilometre inland (ironic in the year the Government agreed coastal access).
I cannot see any reason why the existing footpath cannot be allowed to stay in place, with a footbridge constructed over the breach of the defences, which looks like being at Pye’s Hall.
I’ve put a map of the affected area on:
http://www.walk-west.co.uk/donnanook.htmltogether with information of public meetings, email addresses, links and downloads of relevant PDF files.
Please respond!
Cheers
Geoff