The proposed Dengie Marshes Wind Farm is moving forward into a phase of public survey and persuasion. (A company called Dengie Marshes Wind Farm Limited was incorporated on 18 October 2024 and shares directors with Blenheim Renewables, the company which initiated the project.)
The project has a website and is holding a series of consultation events with two scheduled for this week:
Thursday 6th February 15:00 – 19:00 Southminster Memorial Hall, Southminster, CM0 7DE
Saturday 8th February 12:00 – 16:00 Burnham Village Hall, 2 Arcadia Road, Burnham-on-Crouch CM0 8EF
They aim to submit a planning application this ‘summer’.
Maldon Green Link 19 (Cold Norton-Latchingdon-Southminster)
Mid Essex Cycle Route 9 also skirts the Dengie (Danbury-South Woodham Ferrers)
These would help move towards the #rECOnnectDengie ‘Slow Ways Dengie’ vision but a quick look already reveals the lack of:
a south Dengie route connecting through to National Cycle Network route 13
routes connecting north Dengie villages to south Dengie villages and the Crouch Valley railway line (eg. Mayland-Althorne-Althorne station, and Woodham Mortimer-Purleigh-Cold Norton- Fambridge)
a link to the Burnham Ferry connecting the Dengie to Rochford/Southend/South Essex
plans that avoid busy roads (eg. B1021)
There are no maps or route descriptions for walking that I have seen so far and the cycle routes seem to entirely be on existing roads. When I go into the survey and more of the supporting documents I’m hoping to see more ambition: elements like segregated cycle routes, and a network vision. At the very least I’m expecting something on ‘quiet lane’ designations, continuous pavements, safe crossing points, speed restrictions and traffic calming measures
The Dengie Hundred Bus Users Group public meeting on November 6th was oversubscribed and spilt out of the Burnham Town Council chamber into the lobby behind.
In that lobby, a printer was churning out copies of the order of service for Remembrance Sunday, making it impossible to hear what was said in the chamber. Eventually, I wriggled myself in.
Last week, we celebrated the first year of the Dengie Climate Action Partnership (DCAP) with a social at the Victoria Inn.
More folk turned up for the social in the pub than regularly do for the monthly meet-ups in Burnham Council Chamber. An unsurprising but salutary reminder that an open formal meeting is not for everyone.
Thoughts on the General Election and Reform UK in Maldon constituency.
Last Thursday, I stayed up all night for the first time in years. It was the UK General election of course and despite the perils of displaced slumber I was minded to burn the midnight oil and watch the disgraced fall. I didn’t have the comforts of home and TV to assuage the sleep deprivation, however, because I had a formal role to play as a ‘counting agent’ invigilating the manual tallying in my constituency. We got the last bus to Maldon, had a drink in the Queen’s Head and walked down to the Blackwater Leisure Centre as the sunlight disappeared.
I am grateful to Tony Fittock (District Councillor for Althorne ) for letting me know that the process of creating a new Local Development Plan for Maldon District has begun. So my previous post on the matter revealed my own ignorance of the Maldon District Local Development Plan (LDP) Review: Issues and Options Consultation, which ran from 17 January to 14 March 2022.
From this, I learned that ‘the Plan Period for the review of the LDP Review is going to be 20 years.’ As the current plan runs until 2029, this indicates that its successor will cover the period up to 2050. As noted previously, the UK government is committed by law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels (net zero) by 2050. The next Local Development Plan will therefore set out a vision and a framework for the future development of Maldon District that must include complete decarbonisation.
Migration over the River Crouch, 19th February 2023
I was pleased to see the ‘East Atlantic Flyway‘ among the seven sites recently backed by the UK government for Unesco world heritage status and the recognition of the ecological importance of the east coast wetlands that stretch from the Humber to the Thames.
This oriental margin is the terraqueous zone I wrote about in Managed Retreat #1, a fudge of ‘warpings, flats, carrs, fenlands, broads, salt marshes, intertidals, littoral zones and the drowned lands of the London-Brabant Massif’. In the tamed realm of these islands, it’s one of those places where the self-willed still pierces the fabric of the human superstructure, where civilization is thinner.
The walk pauses by the entombed Bradwell Nuclear Power Station to hear Angenita Teekens on her mile
Last Sunday I participated in a stage of Beach of Dreams, walking between Bradwell Waterside and Burnham-on-Crouch. Beach of Dreams is an art project initiated by Ali Pretty of Kinetika, it’s a collaborative 500-mile walk between Lowestoft and Tilbury
Last weekend Claire and I attended a beekeeping taster workshop in Ulting run by the Maldon and Dengie 100 Beekeepers. We already have a hive (bee-less) and made contact with Peter Davison, who oversees of the management of the Divisional Apiary based at the Arcadia Road Allotment Site. The taster workshop is designed to give would be beekeepers the opportunity to have some hands on experience with real live bees as well as Continue reading “MAD about Bees”→
‘The landward farms produced not only corn, cattle and sheep but great herds of half-wild horses and ponies with a sprinkling of donkeys. They roamed free as the wind over the wide rough grass marshes bordering the sea-wall. When the day came for them to be rounded up and sent to market at Wickford and elsewhere, the scene was like something out of the Wild West. Rough riders on horseback, with cracking whips and yelling in broad Essex, hustled the horses, with flying manes, flourishing their tails like banners, into wooden corrals where they could be sorted out, branded and taken quietly up the lane to the farm on the way to market.’
Dengie Bioregion 