CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF OUR GUERNSEY GROUP

Our local groups achieve remarkable things. In Guernsey, our Local Group has spent 20 years fundraising and campaigning for traffic-free routes.

Pat Wisher from Guernsey Living Streets Group here describes one of their achievements: the Baubigny Schools pathway.

On August Bank Holiday 2010, after three years of campaigning, Guernsey Living Streets Group opened a new pathway through a derelict vinery site to enable pupils to use some existing green lanes and then take a short cut through the vinery into the back of the campus of their new school. A completely traffic-free route for walkers and cyclists.

We faced huge opposition at the time, but we did it with the help of £20,000 raised from local businesses.

When we opened the path in 2010 it was just bare earth banks and some fencing ready for planting 600 hawthorn saplings.

Now nature has taken over with a beautiful hawthorn hedge. The pathway is regularly used by children going to school, horse riders, cyclists and members of public.  The schools themselves use the route for various curricular studies including PE, Geography and geocaching.

Each August Bank Holiday we hold a Tranquillity Walk. The route is designed to take in the quiet lanes, green lanes and Ruettes Tranquilles in the parish and all funds raised by the Tranquillity Walk are used for the Baubigny school's pathway.

We also sell greetings cards and calendars to help us fundraise for the school's pathway and are always thinking about improvements and extensions to the route.

The cycling and pedestrian infrastructure on Guernsey is very poor - roads are very narrow, pavements are very narrow or non-existent, vehicles drive on the pavements and park on them. There is only one major shared cycle/pedestrian path. However, we do have an excellent bus service which is very cheap. 

We know there is still more to do to make walking to school safer and more inviting. This is why we’ve joined up with the Neighbourhood Policing Team to start encouraging parents to park and stride to combat dangerous parking around another local school and are also working with a local headteacher who is interested in developing a school walking bus.