Woodland Stroll

A bright, sunny afternoon, just perfect for a walk in the woods with these two little lads and a good way to clear my mind ahead of this evening.

The future of the village school is to be discussed tonight at a meeting of parents and representatives from the council. The council want to look at building a new school over 5 miles away and merging with another two schools up that way. Not impressed is perhaps the most polite way to express the general opinion of the villagers so this meeting could be interesting to say the least. Our village is rural, small and without a shop and the only other amenity to speak of is the obligatory village inn so to lose our school would destroy the heart of our community. The whole idea is frankly ludicrous with something as obvious as local geography meaning accessing the propsed location of the new school 5 miles up the hill on a winter's morning would be dicing with death. Competent drivers with 4x4 vehicles struggle on the roads around here in snow and ice so how they expect to get a school bus up there defies belief. Oh I could list many, many more points but I'll save my ranting for tonight.Recent government legislation is supposed to protect schools like ours so battle lines are being drawn.