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. 

Donkey Lane Community Orchard

Our extremely well attended open meeting was held on Wednesday 21st November and such is the level of interest from the Community, we have organised two site visits during the early part of December.

Once these have taken place we will be setting up a small management group in order to progress this exciting project. 

In the background all of the legalities, finance, training and administrative tasks are progressing nicely. The plan is to start clearing the immense amount of rubbish and brambles once we are into the New Year. 

As we believe that there are some significant heritage varieties to be found there, we are approaching this task with great care and sensitivity to ensure that any ‘at risk’ trees are stabilised. 

We will be calling for volunteers once we get started. However if you would rather help with publicity and planning rather than getting your hands dirty please contact us.

A copy of the meeting notes together with a copy of our aims for the orchard can be found here

Community Litter Pick

A huge thank you to everyone who came along to the community litter pick yesterday. 24 volunteers and 16 bags of litter collected. Well done everyone.

We were surprised at how much litter there was this time as over the years, the amount we have collected at each event has reduced. Sadly, this time it had increased and we're still having to pick up 'poo' bags!!!!!

Our thanks to the Parish Council for the loan of the litter picking equipment and for collecting the bags.

Look out for our next community litter pick which will be held in the spring.

Donkey Lane Community Orchard

Greening Chinnor are delighted to announce that we are working with Mr Derek Nixey, Chinnor Parish Council and The Chiltern Conservation Board to regenerate and restore the old, overgrown orchard in Donkey Lane.

Our aim is to restore the orchard to be a viable and shared community area. Not only are we looking at restoration but also about finding out and recording the habitat, wildlife and social history of the site. To enable this exiting project to get off the ground, we are looking for volunteers to help process the project.

We are holding an open general meeting on Wednesday 21 November in the White's Field Community Hall at 7:30 pm. To find out more come along and see what we’re planning. Light refreshments will be served.

PLEASE NOTE NEW VENUE!

Thermal Imaging

Over the last 3 years, Greening Chinnor have Thermal Imaged 80 properties in Chinnor and will once again be offering free thermal imaging for approximately 30 Chinnor households or community buildings during 16-27 January 2017. This involves taking a series of infrared thermal images of your property enabling you to see areas of heat loss. This normally takes about 20 minutes to complete. In March, once all the images have been processed and a household report compiled for each property, an open meeting will be held to enable you to come along and discuss your report on a one to one basis with one of our imagers. As part of the evening we will provide information to assist you in reducing unnecessary heat loss.

Energy bills continue to be a worrying part of our outgoings. We can keep these costs down by making sure our houses are well insulated and not losing heat to the outside. This will also help us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and work to slow down Climate Change.

This is a free service we offer to the community. Our thanks to Chinnor Parish Council for sponsoring the open evening.

If you are interested please supply your contact details to Maureen Dyroff at mdyroff@tiscali.co.uk or telephone 01844 352816. Householders will be contacted with more details once we have compiled our list.