The last days of summer at St Georges Park

Contributor "NT" mails us this lovely photograph of autumn sunshine

Hello, I was cycling down Park Crescent adjacent to St George's Park at 5:30pm this evening and saw some inspired parking - I thought you might like to see it and maybe share it on the blog.

Given that the weather is about to go from heatwave to blizzards very shortly I'm sure the driver was just trying to save precious seconds in parking their car properly and walking the width of Park Crescent to reach the grassy haven of the park; this way they got straight into enjoying the last of the unexpected sunshine the second they stepped from their car.

Yes, we think WR58JXK is making the most of the late summer evenings, though we wouldn't park under trees ourselves -can make the roof and windscreen sticky. Better to use the wide green space behind it.

The Park selloff -creating a new batch of troublemakers

We drove over to the Council House on the day the parkland selloff was discussed, as part of our campaign for a dual carriageway from Lockleaze to the M32. Nobody else, no other  Evening Post commenters were there to support us and our van with it's "Make Muller Road an M-Way" sign on the side, and we didn't get into the local paper either.

There was someone with a horse who did, which gives us ideas for the future.

Nor were there any police FIT teams out recording these subversives, so we did their work. Welcome to the Big Society, where we are forced to spy on subversives without even the allowances the DDR used to give their reporters.

And who are these people we we were taking note of? Well on the right of the photos there some green party people already in the database for being potentially socialist ,but in the foreground, we were horrified to see the stockwood conservative councillor

These people should be on our side in the war of the motorists, yet they won't help us with our Lockleaze dual carriageway plans -no cash, they say- and are even starting to worry about parkland.

Looking at the video, it had a real 1980s feel to it. There's some union people up by the building entrance opposing cuts, people in the foreground shouting out against selloffs of council-owned assets. Ah, the old days are back again!

Council meeting today!

Today, Sept 7, is the next council meeting, where some protesters will be campaigning to protect the parkland of the city, such as here, the fields by Lockleaze, from progress.

The green party, are obviously against it.
Question is, what should the B.Traffic stance be?
To us, this green stuff is all wasted space which could be replaced by drive in superstores or more housing. But we fear something: the consequences -the congestion.

Look at this "field" above. Soon it will be a playing field for Fairlawn School. Behind the trees, the hill drops down to Muller Road, a key bottleneck in this part of the city, and a road you can waste hours on of a weekday evening.

There is no point redeveloping these forgotten parts of Lockleaze without adding a new dual carriageway to the M32!

There. We said it. S106 infrastructure money needs to go into either uprating Muller road to a full dual carriageway -as we've advocated in the past- or adding a new route to the M32.

Which is where an idea springs to mind. St John's Lane. From Purdown Camp down to Stapleton. Twenty years ago you could get car up it -admittedly, a stolen one you'd have to torch afterwards, but you really could drive all the way up it from Stapleton to Lockleaze. Not now. There's a gate in the way, relegating it to being nothing but a foot/bike path.

But sometimes, the gate gets opened by the allotment people, and the dream comes back.

A dream of a road, from here, the top of the city, right down to stapleton, and then, ideally, a new M32 on-ramp. Just a short one, like the Mina Road on ramp; enough to reward people with big-engined cars. And here, a place for the road to begin.

Look someone is trying it already, with their Peugeot 306, X615EDB, seeing just how far down the footpath they can get.

What better way to enjoy a summer evening than to drive down here and to dream of more dual carriageways.

Trivia footnote: the fields above date from the civil war; some of the hedges are apparently historical monuments or something. Presumably St John's Lane has the same history and access rules, despite the gate and the no trespassing signs. Sept 10, 1645, was when Prince Rupert of the Rhine and hence Bristol surrendered to the people, at least in the form of Cromwell's New Model Army. So what will happen this week, 365 years on?