PARKING: A daily battle with traffic

Some years ago I attended a meeting in Rothbury, organised, I believe, by the parish council, about this very question.

Several possible options were outlined in an impressive display, including a pedestrian crossing linking Newcastle House Hotel and High Street. We were, if my memory serves me right, invited to vote on our preferences.

And then it all went quiet. Nothing has been done, but still the problem remains.

Over more than the quarter of a century I have lived in the Rothbury area I have drawn the parish council’s attention from time to time to the problem of parking and the lack of adequate pavements for pedestrians along Bridge Street. I have sent photographs to illustrate the problem.

To the best of my knowledge absolutely nothing has been done about it.

Bridge Street, too, is an accident waiting to happen. It is a disgrace that there is not a proper pavement on both sides between the post office and Tomlinson’s on what is, in effect, a single carriageway stretch of road.

I regularly see mothers with small children and frail elderly people with walking aids being forced to walk in the road because cars are parked on the pavement outside the Railway Hotel, to say nothing of regular pedestrians, such as myself, having to do daily battle with traffic as we are forced onto the road in this congested area.

There is no reason why one direction of this dangerous stretch of road cannot be made a priority direction, as on the bridge at Thropton, and for a full-width pavement to be established, at least on one side, preferably on both.

At the same time we also need a physical barrier to make parking on the pavement here impossible.

Will it take an accident for this matter to be resolved?

Clive Wilkinson,

Silverton Lane,

Rothbury