What a year!

With your support, we have made much progress with the Greenway.

Somerset Council has agreed to fully support the project (sadly, without any money) despite their own options assessment supporting a route alongside the A38.

We have presented our campaign to numerous parish and town councils, all of whom have pledged their support. Important County councillors are actively lobbying on our behalf, and we have developed relationships with innumerable influential people and organisations.

Somerset Foundation NHS Foundation Trust is the biggest employer in Somerset with responsibility for all the hospital and community care in both mental and physical health, as well as running a number of GP surgeries across the county. The Trust supports the Greenway at Board level in recognition of the crucial part that nature and exercise has to play in the health of our communities.

The Somerset Integrated Care Board (it has had many names and guises before including the Health Authority, PCT, PCG etc) welcome the Greenway as an active space that can be used for Social Prescriptions i.e. supported exercise and activity in conjunction with traditional treatment.

Wellington Town Council strongly demonstrated their support of the Greenway by identifying £10,000 in their 2024 budget to be used for kickstarting the campaign and supporting its development.

Somerset Community Trust has generously granted a significant sum for us to develop materials to promote the campaign and to continue our development.

So, thank you to you, our supporters. Thank you for coming on our journey, and especially to those of you who have 'Walked the Greenway' with us. We continue to do this on a monthly basis so, if you want to join us on one, sign up on the Events page on our website.

Thank you!

Council conundrum

Somerset Council has published their much delayed options appraisal for sustasinable travel between Wellington and Taunton. It looked at an enormous amout of information about the two towns, our populations and the current forms of travel between them. Needless to say, they noted the majority used the heavily congested A38

They then looked at a number of routes for active travel and, after much deliberation, settled

on..... yes, you guessed it.... four routes along the A38; two on the north side and two on the south. They decided these would be favoured by people with less ability because there is no lighting on the Greenway - or on the A38 apart from a small section from the Chelston roundabout to the Blackdown Garden Centre. There were quite a few anomalous findings, but the crunch comes with cost. To build a route beside a road is at least four times as expensive as building one across open countryside!

So here is the conundrum. Somerset Council has no money to build anything so no action will

come of the report until such time as their finances are returned to health. But, because the Greenway is a community-driven project built by us, they fully support us in our endeavours. They also support building an A38 route in sections but cannot see themselves doing that now or at anytime in the forseeable future. We ran a small poll on this website a few weks ago asking you which route your preferred, and you responded with a thumping 85% in favour of a Greenway. As a result of consultation earlier this week, the Council will form a position statemnt stating the above which will go to the Council Executive in January forconsideration of adoption into policy.

This is important for us because we now know we have the full support of the council and any number of County Councillors. The Greenway appeals to so many both as a commuter route and a leisure facility. It is accessible to all ages and abilities and cannot fail to bring added prosperity to the area. So, bouyed by this result, we enter the new year with plans to start concentrating on phase one from Wellington to Nynehead.

This is the point where we need to start bolstering our very small team. We need people experienced in land negotiations, planners, builders and fundraisers. We have many partnerships already, but if you think you have something to offer, please get in touch.

Greenway news

We have had tremendous support for our walks along the Greenway over the last few months. We continue to plod though the mud (it;s not that bad) throughout the winter, and have our next coming up on Sunday, 10th December. This will go from Taunton to Wellington starting at 09:30. It takes about four hours to cover the 8 miles.

If you know Whar3Words, we gather here ///plug.grace.spoken and finish here //stoppage.skims.runners. More information and sign up here

We are very grateful to Wellington Town Council for their support. In their recent meeting to set next year's budget, they created a sum of £10,000 to be made available to us upon application. This was a strategy used to kickstart the reinstatement of Wellington Railway Station and the refurbishment of Wellington Monument. Both these projects have been succesful, and we have every confidence the Greenway will be the next one

Somerset Council has circulatred the Sustainability Options study into travel between Wellington and Taunton commissioned last year by Somerset West and Taunton Council. Although it makes much of various routes around the A38, we are confident the council will put its support behind the Greenway. We know that the Greenway would be at least four times cheaper than a path by the highway, and that the community-driven nature of this project (like the Strawberry) is an attractive option for a council that has no money!