I love MV (and Bathley)

Copy of post to Muskham Messenger on 27th November 2023

One summer evening in late August 1983, in the first week that Dani, our 4 year old Susie, and I had come to live in The Park, a neighbour Phil Tallon (a colleague of mine at Newark tech, whose wife Jackie had found our house for us) asked “Do you fancy a pint in Bathley?”. I’d no idea where Bathley was but, being a bit of a boozer at the time, I readily accepted. Phil said “there’s a nice path across the fields”, and that was my early introduction to North Muskham Footpath 1 and Bathley Footpath 8 – across the pedestrian crossing over the East Coast Main Line, and on across the fields to The Crown.

Jim Wishart has a knack for naming things and years later, when he coined the phrase “Muskham Vale” for the area back from the Trent to Bathley, for me it captured the sense of ‘home’ that my 1983 evening walk had instilled in me as, with the sun setting behind what over the years I jokingly told our kids were the “Muskham Alps”, I realised North Muskham was going to be a place that mattered to me. I believe it matters to the majority of our 1000 people – lifelongers like Ann Webb or Martin Talbot, or the many others who came here, liked it and stayed - and there’s never, since the A1 was rebuilt in the 1960s, been a proposal more likely to change our surroundings than the recently revealed (but long time in the hidden planning) “Great North Solar Park” project, a massive scale top-down big money project that, whatever one’s views on climate change and net zero are, I believe should absolutely be given our attention.

For the last 40 years I’ve been tramping around those same fields – for exercise, stress relief, fun and fascination with the seasonal changes you only really see when you go to the same places regularly. But, apart from walks with Dani (or in post-COVID time with folk signed up for the Muskham Secateurs), I’d never done the walk in a group of 16 (the attached photo was taken towards the end of yesterday’s Great North Road Solar Park walk, when 4 had taken shortcuts home, to avoid hypothermia in yesterday’s cold, or for other engagements), who turned up to have a look, on the ground, at what the recently announced solar farm project would look and likely feel like.

Thanks to those of you who turned up – I think everyone in the group had a slightly different reason for being there and I hope you’ll find a way to register what you think over coming days in any outstanding responses to the Parish Council’s request for your views by 30^th November – your views, for or against the project plans or (like me) “OK, part of this, but in properly planned people-friendly way” really are important. In the days of online petitions, WhatsApp decision making in closed groups, and X/Twitter, keeping quiet means we don’t count in the thinking of the powerful. For me, this issue is not about net-zero, it's about planning control - about having a view and a voice on things that affect us.

I think it’s safe to say that there aren’t only 16 of us wanting to know more about this proposal – if you would like to participate in a rerun of yesterday’s walk, email me at jgray.muskham@gmail.com. And please, those of you who did brave the cold yesterday, speak out with your thoughts in whatever way you feel comfortable – but make sure your thoughts get to your Parish Council (or Parish Meeting whose voices are being ignored just now and whose ability to insist on being listened to will be enhanced by every local response you make).