The proposed Marston Vale Waterway will provide a forested waterway with cycleways, footpaths, and bridleways linking the old market town of Bedford and the River Great Ouse, westward through new large-scale housing areas to the now growing Marston Vale Community Forest - one of twelve new forests created in 1991. (The Marston Vale is equidistant from London and Birmingham, just east of junction 13 on the M1 motorway.)
Without this new waterway these housing developments will be built as closed units without easy access to the surrounding countryside. The waterway is designed for 21st C inclusion, to support new communities, provide jobs, sustainability and meet healthy living ideals.
Like the Marston Vale Community Forest, this waterway project will be of benefit to central England, the urban population of Bedford and the new communities which will be developed along the immediate waterway route. 28million people are estimated to live within easy reach of the area.
The project is designed to regenerate scarred and featureless landscape, provide flood attenuation in areas of intense house and road build, support biodiversity, provide leisure facilities, and create an environment in which people want to live and play.
The Waterway will encourage sustainable lifestyles in the new communities which are being created by government in the Marston Vale (between Bedford and Milton Keynes) - providing a 'wet' project to balance the 'dry' forest.
It will demonstrate innovative reinvention of waterways for the 21st Century in terms of flood attenuation, meeting new tourism, leisure, healthy living and sustainable lifestyles agendas. This is a project that dares to be different - innovation with sustainability for new communities - looking creatively at water use and management - challenging what has become the norm in housing development in the area - it will bring the countryside into the new urban areas.
As with the community forest, it is impossible to raise funds for this project based on a conventional business case. The area needs regeneration before new communities are built. The landscape is scarred with clay pits created by the manufacture of bricks to rebuild London after World War II and for many years the area has been the largest waste tip in Europe as old clay pits have been filled with the waste from London and other urban areas.
So – if you want this to happen in your area – please support the Trust. Get involved. Help generate funds and make the project happen. It is being progressed as a series of small projects, each taking forward the project step by step. Take on a project with friends. Make it happen!
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