Monthly Archives: March 2013

Three teams of Friends today.

A team of six litter pickers around Crag Lane and the woods.

A team who tidied up around the Buck  Stone – removing rubbish and clearing brambles.

Finally, a team who cleared encroaching holly and two fallen trees from the footpath along the stream.

Sorry that your correspondent only has photos of the path team, but a big thank you to everyone who turned out – about seventeen of us.

Leeds City Council staff recently bulldozed away the mountain bike track to the north of Stairfoot Lane.  Subsequently, Your correspondent was invited to a attend a site meeting to discuss the track.  Before attending the meeting, your correspondent canvassed the opinion of the FOAW mailing list, and it would be fair to say that the overwhelming view of those on the list was in favour of the existence of the bike track or at least had a live and let live attitude.

The meeting took place today, 1 March 2013.  Your correspondent attended and met a member of the council staff, the three City councillors for Alwoodley, a City councillor for Adel and local landowners.

It was explained that the bike track had been removed by the council for health and safety reasons.  The validity of those reasons were discussed and your correspondent passed on the views of FOAW – giving Councillor Harrand a copy of the emails your correspondent had received.

It would be fair to say that the general view of the meeting was in favour of the existence of the bike track – as somewhere for people to get out and engage in healthy physical activity.  It will be interesting to see how things develop.

There are two footnotes.

Firstly, your correspondent found at the remains of the bike track a note from a dog walker to the bikers suggesting that Friends of Adel Woods were responsible for the removal of the bike track.  This is simply untrue and the result of an overactive imagination.

Secondly, if you have been to the track and seen some new wooden stakes in the land, these are apparently there to mark out the boundary of the land owned by Leeds City Council.