The Marston Vale Trust takes a neutral stance on the creation of the much talked about rowing lake. If planning permission is granted on Thursday 20 July, it will be located across the centre of the Grange Estate (purchased recently by Marston Vale Trust) and reach almost to Bedford Town Football Club, near the A603 in Cardington.

Whatever the outcome of the planning committee meeting on 20 July, the Bedford River Valley Park will happen. It will become a fantastic and important country park, with or without an Olympic sized rowing lake.

We have been invited to attend:

Renhold Parish Council meeting on Thursday 27 July, 7.30pm

and

Cople Parish Council meeting on Monday 18 September, 7.30pm

We hope to be at both.

I understand both meetings will be open to the public, so why not come along?

Ian Foll, our Business Development Manager made a presentation about the River Valley Park, to Eastcotts Parish Council last evening (12 July), at the Baptist Church Hall in Cotton End.

Around 12 people attended and Ian reports that members of the audience were slow to question him about the project. Whether he threatened to keep them captive until they made a contribution, he didn’t say. It would seem however, that a dialogue did happen and parish councillors expressed general support for the project and hoped that surrounding villages would have physical access to brvp.

I made a presentation to Willington Parish Council on 27 June, in the village hall. There were around 6 members, the clerk and perhaps 12 members of the public. Not a huge turn out (it did clash with a footy match somewhere in Germany), but there were lots of questions and general interest.

Ian Foll, the Forest Team’s Business Development Manager will make a short presentation about the River Valley Park at:

Eastcotts Parish Council meeting on Wednesday 12 July, 7.30pm in Cotton End Baptist Church Hall

and Great Barford Parish Council meeting on Tuesday 18 July, 7.30pm in the Village Hall

Both are open to the public, so if you are interested, please come along.

As of early July, we have taken our exhibition to 4 locations in the area and spoken to lots of people. We have been setting up the Forest’s 3×4m marquee and put up our panels inside. Anyone passing is snared by our team of Forest Volunteers and asked to have a look at the information on offer. Everyone has the chance to take in what is a fairly complex story and can ask questions or make comments.

We are encouraging everyone who has anything at all to say on the subject to jot something down on a Post-It note which gets stuck on the exhibition. This is useful as others can read comments.

We are very fortunate to have local ’spatial artist’, Paul Pibworth working with us at several events. The extremely amiable Paul is proving successful in persuading people to write their comment on a chalk board; Paul then photographs the comment together with the author’s face. An excellent way for us to record comments in a very personal way.

So far we have been to:

• Sandy Summer Festival on 17 June (13 comments)
• Shortstown Funday on 24 June (30 comments)
• Priory Country Park on 25 June (42 comments)
• Great Barford Monthly Market on 1 July (17 comments)

Huge thanks (as ever) to Forest Volunteers for their enthusiatic help - Maggie, June, Margaret, Andy & Sue - and of course Paul and everyone who has taken the time to come and talk to us.

More chances to see us at:

Bedford River Festival - 15 & 16 July - Russell Park, between the music stage and the show arena

‘Run Wild’ at the Forest Centre, Marston Moretaine - Sunday 23 July

Go to http://www.marstonvale.org/brvp/roadshow.html  for more information about the roadshows

The launch of the Forest of Marston Vale’s first blog - an adventure for us and certainly for me.

I’m going to call Bedford River Valley Park ‘brvp’ - hope that’s ok with you.

I will be adding information about the project, how it’s developing, where we have been, who we are talking to, current issues, and I am certain , other things that I can’t think of just now.

Please let us know what you think about this blog, the brvp and Forest web site and most importantly, the brvp project as a whole.

We are in the early stages of producing a masterplan. It won’t be any kind of plan without your input, so please tell us what you think - leave a posting here or if you prefer to use a different medium, our other contact details are at www.marstonvale.org/brvp/contact.html

Hope you enjoy this blog and find it useful and interesting.

Guy