Footpaths & Bridleways

 A few lines to bring you up to date with what is happening with our footpaths and bridleways.

The first thing is that it is absolutely brilliant so many of you are using the lockdown to get your permitted exercise enjoying our footpaths. We all know that it is a bit muddy but please keep to the paths to avoid trampling farmers crops. 

Greening Chinnor, working with Oxfordshire County Council (OCC), Chinnor Parish Council (CPC) and the Chiltern Society (CS), have been regularly checking all of our local network of paths and bridleways with a view to getting essential repairs and improvements done. You may have noticed that decrepit stiles have started to be replaced with nice pedestrian and canine friendly gates and that an extensive programme of improving waymark discs is underway. We have recently been given a generous grant from CPC towards these improvements.

Last year, together with OCC and the Chiltern Society, a major proposal for replacing all broken and unusable stiles around Emmington was put together. We are delighted that the Trust for Oxfordshire’s Environment (TOE) approved this proposal and made a significant grant that enabled all of the gates and associated kit to be purchased ready for installation by the South Chilterns Path Maintenance Volunteers who are the group that carry out much of this major work. Unfortunately, due to current restrictions they are unable to get out and get this work done. Moving forward there is another major proposal with TOE for necessary works around Henton.

We’re pleased the list of outstanding issues continues to drop significantly. An example of an issue is a broken stile and a report is an individual member of the public recording the issue on the OCC online database.

A couple of requests: First to dog walkers please carry on cleaning up after your charge and continue to dispose of the bags responsibly and to all cyclists please make sure you do not cycle on footpaths (marked with a yellow waymark). You can use them but please dismount and push your bike until you meet a bridleway.