Letter

DURING four weeks we will see Crediton High Street closed for essential work on sewer pipes. We have all experienced diversions, hold-ups and delays.

I feel we need to reflect on the larger picture. Crediton’s town centre carries an enormous amount of lorries, buses and cars on a daily basis negotiating cars parked both sides of the road with very small gaps to manoeuvre, so are the diverted routes posing any different problems than we witness daily?

At the moment we can access St Saviour’s Way car park via Greenway with a complimentary FREE one hour parking.

Access to the town is still available to us on foot, when using the car park available.

From time-to-time any disruption to our busy lives will cause us to stress out to the maximum, we need to remember the town will be fully accessible in four weeks time. Will we then be returning to the town to support our local traders who need our support?

For 52 weeks of the year, each trader gives a good service to our local community.

During the past two weeks of the closure I have found shoppers going about their lives at a quieter pace who say “hello” and I even met a friend at the bakers I’ve not seen for a long while.

The negative feelings, thoughts and behaviour can be overcome simply by giving ourselves time.

I have heard recently of parents turning up at school’s in their pj’s - in the age of modern technology what are we doing with the time we are saving?

The convenience of larger stores bring us in, in our hundreds, but I feel after the road closure is lifted we need to look at ways to support our town traders.

During the closure did you visit a person who lives on their own to see if the need for help to shop etc was required?

We need to stop at this stage and think this is a four weeks closure, not a closure forever, what will we have to test us next? Repairs to pot holes? Essential works are just that - essential for us to live, travel and to get on with our lives.

Margaret Manning

Bellingate

Colebrooke