Today (May 6th) was the day of our 6th Annual Awareness Ride. Every year we hold this ride to raise awareness of what is now available for non motorised users and to highlight how poor other sections still are.

Once again we had no ride from Royston. The situation for cycling and walking has only worsened over the last few years. The A10 has seen no improvements for decades in this section, despite traffic increases. The section between Royston and Melbourn is so poor that once again, no one felt a ride was a safe or sensible option. With the ever changing political climate, such as LEP restructuring, and the cross county nature of the section, this remains a very tough area to get any improvements made to. We shall persevere with this as our main focus in the future.

The section between Melbourn and the M11 has seen improvements. Every year we have generally seen a small section improved. About 40 riders of all ages gathered at Trumpington park and Ride.

Riders gathering at the start

We cycled (with one roller blader) through Trumpington Meadows on a gloriously sunny spring day.

Exit of Trumpington Meadows

We continued along the old path through Hauxton and continued to Harston. This is the section that has been greatly improved this year. It was noted how easy it was to pass pedestrians now. Also it was a joy to see parents can now cycle besides small children. We had riders as young as 5 with their parents out with us today. The youngest were only just learning to ride bikes independently.

New Harston section

The section is not perfect with some poor sight lines over driveways etc. But the Cambs CC officers have done the best they can and the improvements are greatly appreciated.

After Harston we continued onto Foxton and the only small road section to the back of Foxton level crossing.

Small road section at Barrington Road, Foxton

We continued on to cross the A10 at Shepreth, with the small island in the middle of the road providing some refuge, allowing you to at least deal with one carriageway of traffic at a time.

Crossing the A10

We then continued onto Phillimore Garden Centre (thank you once again for allowing us to use your field ) for the finish of the ride where cake and bananas etc. were served. Many thanks to all who attended and to everyone who has supported us over the last year.

·       As you will have seen, the Harston path is now complete.  The April meeting will offer a chance to hear any feedback.

·       Efforts continue for funding for the Royston-Melbourn link. While much progress has been made in terms of securing financial pledges from various parties on both sides of the border, the critical and much anticipated support from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership has been set back due to the recent migration of the LEP to the new mayoralty layer of local government.

·       An approach has been made for support from the Herts LEP.

·       The Greater Cambridge Partnership is currently undertaking a business case review of the Melbourn-Royston link, and a report will be considered by the GCP Board this summer.  Meanwhile, the GCP ‘Greenways’ project identifies the Melbourn-Royston link as an integral component.

·       Councillors are working together cross-border, all-party, and together with our MPs, on the Melbourn-Royston link.

·       Thanks to those who’ve supported the Community Sweeper pilot by volunteering to drive the South Cambs street sweeping vehicle along the completed sections of the A10 cycle path.  Following extensive training, a first test run is due to take place this Friday, heading out from Wyevale Garden Centre who’ve kindly offered to host the vehicle.

·       A couple of admin jobs could use some extra input – if you are available or would like to know more, we’d love to hear from you.  These mainly involve small pieces of writing for Royston bridge grant applications.

Situations Vacant for A Communication with Outside Media Person. Minimal hours, Salary £0.00 but there could be an enormous level job satisfaction if and when we ever get this bridge over the A505 and path from Royston-Melbourn…!

The Greater Cambridge Partnership are running a set of public engagement events around creating cycle, walking and equestrian routes along the A10 – for a Melbourn Greenway. The work behind this Greenway ties in very closely with the A10 campaign and we are looking to draw as much interest around these events to steer an effective design for these future Greenways.

The closest event to us is a Melbourn Community Hub on January 25th.

The leaflet is provided here or the full resolution version can be downloaded below.

View or download the full resolution PDF here

Melbourn Village College student and Royston resident Sambor Czarnawski-Iliev attended a meeting of the Greater Cambridge Partnership Board, to help make the case for a walk/cycle link between Melbourn and Royston. He had conducted a survey of Year 9 classmates, which indicated support for the link, and handed out copies of the results to the Board.

Also speaking in favour of the link were Mike Prior-Jones, who works at Melbourn Science Park, and A10 Corridor Cycling Campaign Chair Susan van de Ven.

All three of us would like to thank the Board for truly listening to what we had to say, and for agreeing to ask officers to produce a business case for the scheme, so that it can be properly considered. We look forward to listening to that consideration at the Board’s next meeting on February 8.

Here are Sambor’s reflections about the value of taking part in the meeting – and playing a small part in the Board’s decision-making process.

True progress- an amazing achievement 

Having myself and Mike was truly helpful, I remind the board that this is all about the people, and the future of the people, I also show how this is so important to the people, as I myself have gotten involved. 

Susan also, during the miserable time in which we waited, noted down whatever there was of importance, which could be mentioned to the board. And, as it turned out, there were quite a lot of subjects of importance. It turned out that we were basically addressing multiple problems of the South Cambridgeshire City Council. And we’re asking for much less money than other projects as well; while we’re asking for 1 million, another project was asking for between 75 to 146 million. 

Michael Prior-Jones’s list of companies, businesses and people who have funded our project also showed how much support there is for the campaign, furthering how worthwhile it is to support our project. The fact that within the survey results I kept the unfavorable singular result, which I concluded within my summary to be a troll, proved to the board that this was definitely a genuine piece pf work, completed by the normal public. It also further made our case stuck in their heads, as it truly stood out. 

Due to all this we truly made an impact on the board, and they began having a discussion not seen before. They agreed to fully actually do something, and this whole shenanigan will definitely stick within their minds, and not be forgotten or replaced by another project.