Science Vale Cycling Update – The Winnaway

Hello,

It is a good time to have a catch up with what is happenning with cycling in the area, starting with The Winnaway

There was money left over from the Winnaway project and the County Council are looking to use this to try to improve crossing the A417 for cyclists at Harwell village.

One issue that we did raise was the rough surface finish where private driveways cross the new Winnaway route. The County Council were not aware of this and the crossing points should have been the same surface standard as the rest of the route. They are going to look into this.

The legal status remains as a footpath and since some of the landowners will not agree to it being changed to a bridleway the County Council have advised us that the best way forward is for HarBUG to request a change in its status. We will be putting a request together, we don’t think there will be a problem as it has been used by cyclists for 30 years or more. The problem is there is a 10 year backlog of applications (this is low priority work for cash strapped councils). We hope given that the Winnaway is an imprortant cycle link we may be able to ‘jump the queue’.

As we have mentioned before a footpath is not the same as a footway. The Winnaway is a footpath and only the landowner can ask you stop cycling on their land and there is landowners permission to cycle on nearly all of the route.

Please slow down for horses and pedestrians when using the Winnaway.