The City Council are providing grants of up to £500 for events and activities in Cambridge that will commemorate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
If you are considering running such an event and are seeking funding, read the application information document (PDF, click here) email: grants@cambridge.gov.uk or call the Grants Team on T: 01223 457857 to request an application form.
But it’s not just parties, and not just the Jubilee…
Groups of local residents or voluntary groups can apply to the Cambridge City Council’s area committees for funding for projects, activities or services.
The priorities for Area Committee Community Grants specifically focus on reducing social and economic inequality for disadvantaged residents. Projects or activities should benefit a specific community or people living in a particular area.
The application process for the 2022/23 round of area committee funding is now open. The closing date for completed applications for groups in and around the Mill Road area is Tuesday 8th February 2022.
The scene in May 1945 when Gwydir Street residents celebrated VE Day. Click the image to read more about Gwydir Street on the Capturing Cambridge website. Photo courtesy of the Cambridgeshire Collection.
Party like it’s June 2002?
Gwydir Street held a street party on Saturday 1st June 2002 for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee…
Cambridge Sustainable Food provide food justice work across the city. They work with residents, businesses, organisations and community groups to advocate for, and enable access to, healthy and sustainably produced food that is good for people and good for the planet.
Tackling food-related inequality is one of today’s most urgent challenges if we are to stem the rising tide of hunger, obesity and other diet-related ill-health such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Cambridge Sustainable Food convenes Cambridge Food Poverty Alliance, a multi-agency partnership which aims to reduce food poverty locally. Read more about this work here, the emergency food access here, and read/download the Covid-19 Emergency Food Response April 2020 – March 2021 (PDF) here.
Maurizio is on the run!
Mill Road’s godfather of pizza and pasta is taking part in the Cambridge Half Marathon on Sunday 17th October 2021.
You can help Maurizio raise funds for local community-based Cambridge Sustainable Food’s food justice work across the city and reach his £500 target by donating what you can via his GoFundMe page, here.
Eat for our Future Campaign
Food poverty is only one aspect of Cambridge Sustainable Food’s work. Food needs to be not only good for people and the planet, but also good for local economies, businesses and jobs.
As part of the newly launched Eat for our Future Campaign Cambridge Sustainable Food will be holding a variety of events across October to help Cambridge eat a Climate Diet, with in-person stalls where you can ask your questions and make a pledge, online events chaired by local sustainable food experts to guide you to a diet that is kinder to the planet, and running seminars for businesses to help them serve food for the future.
The report’s author, Linda Jones. Photo: Cambridge News
Authored by Linda Jones, Emeritus Professor of Health, The Open University (also former Cambridgeshire County Councillor for Petersfield Division in Cambridge) the report highlights Cambridge residents’ dissatisfaction, with fewer than 6% happy with their experience as a pedestrian.
Nearly every respondent mentioned the state of the pavements themselves, with nearly 3/4 of respondents complaining about pavements blocked by parked vehicles. Cambridgeshire County Council have had powers for over a decade to tackle the issue of vehicles obstructing our pavements. And it wouldn’t put a penny on the council tax – enforcement would be self-financing as penalty charge revenue would help to pay the salaries of the existing enforcement officers.
The Living Streets organisation is hoping to map some of the obstructions that clutter our pavements throughout this week. Can you help to highlight the problems which pedestrians face in and around Mill Road?
This is a great opportunity to highlight some of the major barriers to safe walking, especially for wheelchair users and others with disabilities as well as for parents with buggies. Click here to start mapping your local pavement-clutter.
Black, green and blue wheelie-bins and ‘side waste’ block a narrow pavement, off Mill Road. Photo taken two days before blue bin collection, nine days ahead of black bin collection and 15 days before green bin collection.
If you can, please take some time, during the week, to record the locations of misplaced or broken street furniture and guard rails, A-boards cluttering narrow pavements, badly located bike racks, disused phone boxes, traffic signs or street lamps in the middle of pavements and other obstruction. Enter those details in the simple map provided, together with a photograph if you can take one.
However… Traders are permitted to place sign-boards, produce stalls, tables and chairs on their forecourt area. Often the only way to distinguish between the footway and the forecourt is a line of paving blocks. Take a look at the annotated photo, below.
The cycle-stands and the two vehicles are pavement clutter. The produce stall, chairs and table are not, as they are on a shop forecourt.
We thank, David Stoughton, Chair, Living Streets Cambridge, for drawing this campaign to our attention.
Tidying litter costs us all a lot of money every year, so maintaining a cleaner, greener Cambridge is a priority in Cambridge City Council’s Corporate Plan. It’s unrealistic to expect a completely litter-free city, but the council want to significantly reduce it and increase re-use and recycling.
The council are developing a litter strategy, which will cover the management of litter on streets and open spaces. It will include flytipping and street sweeping.
Cambridge City Council need to hear your views on litter and the litter-cleaning services they provide. This will help the council to shape future priorities and recognise what they do well and where they could make improvements.
It would be great if Mill Road area residents respond. Whilst many respondents may focus on the city’s more well-known open spaces – like Parker’s Piece, Jesus Green and Midsummer Common – along with the historic city centre, we need to make our local needs known.
Mill Road Cemetery has its own problems, as do Romsey Rec, Coleridge Rec and St Matthew’s Piece, But what about our side streets? Is your side street near to a take-away? Does each morning bring a regular harvest of discarded drinks cans, expanded polystyrene boxes and part-eaten food? Does it suffer from fly-tipping?
Please respond to the City Council’s online litter survey to tell them your views, and share any ideas you have to help them tackle local problems.
The survey should take about 15 minutes, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve been a good citizen by taking part, and, as a bonus, you can enter a prize draw for £100 of vouchers at the end!
The survey closes at midnight on 15th August 2021. You can contact parks@cambridge.gov.uk if you have any questions about it or the council’s work to prevent litter. They can also provide a printed version of the survey if you know someone without internet access who would like to participate.
YOU & I is the debut single by Lorenza Wildcard, who has been a Mill Roader since returning to the UK from a career break on the Spanish island of Menorca in November 2019.
Born out of a woman’s need to give voice to her feelings following her marriage break-up, the song conveys Wildcard’s raw emotions in honest lyrics which she hopes will help others who are experiencing the same grief.
After the break-up, just before the Covid-19 pandemic struck the UK, the Italian-born media graduate of London Metropolitan University and ex- Londoner found herself alone through lockdown. A recipe for going-stir crazy, you might think, but Wildcard struck up socially-distanced friendships with neighbours in one of the area’s friendliest streets. And she discovered a new talent when she decided to set her feelings down on paper as a way to process the emotional turmoil.
Just 24 hours after writing YOU & I – her first song – and recording her vocals and guitar accompaniment on her mobile phone, Wildcard was approached by producer Ettore della Campa who loved the song and saw potential in her heartfelt vocal style. Della Campa provided studio time to enable Wildcard to record YOU & Iprofessionally. View an excerpt from the video here…
YOU & I – a classic pop ballad with a modern feel– is an uplifting and empowering story told by a promising new singer-songwriter. It aims to speak to all the lost and broken souls whose confidence and self-belief have been shaken to the core. Using powerful lyrics, gritty vocals, and beautiful harmonies Lorenza Wildcard hopes to inspire others to take back control of their lives and follow their dreams.
I wanted to tell my story and share what I went through in the hope that it would reach, help and empower other women who are in a similar situation. I have learnt that I am not alone and a breakup is not going to shake the foundations of who I am, because I am many things – not just a partner. I have grabbed my chances with both hands and I have cut my own path in search of my very own realisation.
This whole experience started by chance and it has been great fun, but I have made it my choice to be where I am today by being true to myself and working hard to get better, and perhaps that also brought me luck.
Lorenza Wildcard
YOU & I, has been available to stream and download on all major music platforms including iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer and Tidal, since Friday 28th May 2021.
Lorenza Wildcard was interviewed by Cambridge 105 Radio‘s Linda Ness & Suzie Thorpe on their Women Making Waves programme on Friday 4th June 2021, And has been added to Cambridge 105’s Unsigned Chart for listeners to vote.
We were saddened to learn today – Wednesday 21st April 2021 – of the passing of popular Mill Road restaurateur, Foudil Rerizani.
Foudil had been living with cancer for some while, but his health declined rapidly over the last few weeks.
Foudil, photo courtesy of Bedouin restaurant.
Cambridge University educated Foudil established the much loved, ever-popular Al Casbah restaurant, at 62 Mill Road, in 1997 as one of the first Charcoal grill restaurants in East Anglia, specialising in marinated grilled meats and fish, with the grill – and leaping flames – eye-catchingly positioned by the front window. The quirky charm of the establishment led to it being described in a Les Routiers review as “un per decentré”.
Al Casbah has since been passed down from father to sons – Karim, Samir, Yacine, Nacer and Djamel – who continue the family tradition of serving fresh North African cuisine.
Foudil and sons, photo courtesy of Al Casbah restaurant
While the boys were growing up, Foudil provided the boys with their own games hall ‘hangout’, open to all, at 98–100 Mill Road, which kept them out of trouble. Since 2011 the premises have been home to Bedouin, the family’s other Mill Road restaurant, replete with a real Bedouin tent and wall rugs from the Sahara, serving traditional tagines and couscous dishes from across the Maghreb.
As well as being a successful restaurateur, Foudil was a good friend of Mill Road especially other café, restaurant and catering proprietors in the area, to whom he lent his expertise. Our thoughts are with his family and many friends. He will be sadly missed and fondly remembered.
Faraj Alnasser is a Syrian refugee who lives with a local family, off Cambridge’s Mill Road, who have taken care of him like a son. “Cambridge has become a home for me, because of this very kind family,” Faraj told us by email.
At just 14 years old, while Faraj’s family were refugees in Egypt, following an insurmountable family rift, Faraj left his family and made his way back to Syria, where he found his former family home bombed out.
After spells in Iraq, in Syria (again) and Turkey (where Faraj learned Turkish) he took the bus to Sofia, Bulgaria, followed a circuitous route through Austria and Germany, finally reaching the Channel coast, where he escaped to the UK by hiding in a refrigerated lorry, in which he nearly died from hyperthermia.
Faraj has now been living in the UK for over 5 years.
In 2016, following a spell in a refugee holding centre, Faraj was offered accommodation by a local family, has learned English at a local language school, and developed his cookery skills.
Faraj has been cooking at Honey and Co, after training at Ottolenghi in London. Thanks to lockdown – a very small silver lining – Faraj is now back in Cambridge and has started cooking his delicious Middle Eastern food for delivery to your house.
The menu includes some old favourites – after eating real Aleppo hummus you will never be satisfied by supermarket hummus again – and some less familiar dishes from his mother’s kitchen in Syria. All the dishes are from local ingredients and everything is vegetarian or vegan – and wonderful.
Bread – including challah and pittas – is freshly baked, and if you have never had pistachio challah, it is very highly recommended, for Shabbat or any day.
We hope Mill Road’s Community of Communities will support Faraj. Email your order from Faraj’s Kitchen at cheffaraj95@gmail.com or phone 07523 832050 to order.
We welcome Faraj’s contribution to the abundance of worldwide authentic food to be found along Cambridge’s Mill Road. Why order from a mundane multiple? Mill Road can offer much better than their banal burgers and prosaic pizzas!
Whist slightly outside our territory, there is plenty of local concern about water quality in our city’s river and keen interest in our local Cam/Granta tributary, Cherry Hinton Brook.
Cam Valley Forum has a tentative proposal to designate formally a stretch of the River Cam in Cambridge as a ‘bathing water’.
However, not everyone is in agreement, that this is the best route to cleaning the Cam…
At this initial informal consultation stage, Cam Valley Forum are inviting comments from local interests directly concerned with the River in the City. The proposal cannot proceed without the benefit of widespread support and agreement.
The area tentatively proposed for the designated ‘bathing water’ is indicated by the red line along the riverbank on the map and satellite images above (Source: Google Earth).
In the Victorian era, all rubbish and waste of every kind was disposed of directly into the river Cam, or into King’s Ditch, right near Market Square.
According to legend, Queen Victoria herself came to visit Cambridge early in her reign. While she was here, she looked at the river, and found it so filthy that she couldn’t even identify all the kinds of rubbish that were floating in the water. She asked, “What are those pieces of paper floating in the river?” Rather than saying they were book and newspaper pages used as toilet paper, the tactful answer was, “Those Ma’am are notices that bathing is forbidden!”.
Eglantyne Jebb was a campaigner for improved living conditions. She wrote an important policy report advocating proper piping from toilets to sewage pipes, and a sewage treatment facility. Her work resulted in the pumping station built on Riverside in 1894, now the Cambridge Museum of Technology.
Quayside from Magdalene Bridge, 1910, showing pumping station chimney downstream, from Tower Project Blog
The Cam has been used for bathing for over four centuries. Traditionally men and boys from the town swam from the banks of Sheep’s Green, whereas those from the University swam a little further upstream. By the early nineteenth century, at least, both sites had become official bathing places known as the Town Sheds and the University Sheds. In the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth, swimming in the river was immensely popular, and both sites had steps into the river, spring-boards, slides and diving platforms.
The Town Sheds were more lavishly equipped. They were managed by a custodian who, amongst other duties, taught boys to swim in Snobs’ Stream (the Millstream that branches from the Cam just south of Hodson’s Folly to serve Newnham Mill). The Town Sheds were a male preserve until, in 1896, the corporation opened the Ladies’ Bathing Place at the southern tip of Sheep’s Green where Snobs’ Stream leaves the river. In 1962 the Ladies’ Bathing Place was closed and mixed bathing was allowed at the Town Sheds.
In the 1970s, concerns about the health risks of polluted river water led to the closure of the Town Sheds and, by 1980, the site had become the base for the Cambridge Canoe Club. In the following decades swimming in rivers was discouraged and the Cam Conservancy, whose remit as the navigation authority includes the upper river, forbade swimming in daylight hours except at designated bathing places. By the beginning of this century there were no such designated places.
However, people continued to swim from the area of the Town Sheds. Jumping off the bridge remained popular. The secluded site of the University Sheds, by then renamed the Newnham Riverbank Club, provides simple wild swimming facilities for paying members. In recent years, people have increasingly enjoyed swimming from Sheep’s Green and Grantchester Meadows, and membership of the Newnham Riverbank Club is over-subscribed. Now, the Cam Conservancy allows swimming in the whole upper river from Byron’s Pool, above Grantchester, down to the King’s Mill Weir in Cambridge.
Cam Valley Forum
Swimming in the river in the 1970s. The Learner Pool, behind the honeycomb block enclosure, was built in 1972 – Cam Valley Forum
You may send any comments to Cam Valley Forum at info@camvalleyforum.uk. If you would like to have a meeting to discuss the proposals, please mention this in your email. You may also leave (polite) comments on this website, below.
Johnny Palmer was so determined to tackle water quality at an island beauty spot near Bath that he bought the land. He now hopes to make Warleigh Weir the first area of river in the UK to be given bathing water status to spearhead a national campaign to clean up inland waterways.
Palmer, a property investor who has swum with his family at Warleigh Weir for many years, was shocked to find out that Wessex Water is allowed to discharge untreated sewage into the River Avon around the beauty spot.
“When I was told, I was like, ‘Woah, hold on. Back up a second. Seriously?’ I didn’t realise storm water mixed with untreated sewage flowed into our river.”
Perhaps the most persistent campaigners have been Becky Malby and her fellow advocates from the Ilkley Clean River Group.
Swimming, paddling and playing in Wharfe at Ilkley – Ilkley Clean River Group
Here is a flavour of the unfolding unfolding story…
Local people in a Yorkshire town are pressing for their river to become the first in the UK to be designated as a bathing area to force the authorities to clean up the water they say is being used as an open sewer.
In the spa town of Ilkley a grassroots campaign has uncovered the regular and routine dumping of untreated sewage by Yorkshire Water – with the approval of the Environment Agency – into the River Wharfe.
Growing pressure to clean up Britain’s rivers to meet bathing water quality is a “game changer” that will require more government funding as the public embrace the outdoors, the head of the Environment Agency has said.
A growing number of river users are calling for action to tackle the routine and legal discharge of untreated sewage into Britain’s waterways, which they say amounts to treating them like an open sewer.
The Environment Agency says nothing will be done to stem the flow of sewage into a Yorkshire river popular with swimmers and families until at least 2030.
Despite acknowledging that the level of sewage discharges into the River Wharfe at Ilkley – which have been admitted by Yorkshire Water – should trigger an investigation, the EA told campaigners nothing will happen for 10 years.
Campaigners seeking to make a river in Yorkshire the UK’s first to be designated a bathing area have accused environment ministers of blocking their application.
In the spa town of Ilkley, river users and residents submitted a 65-page application to turn part of the River Wharfe in the town into a bathing water area last October.
Ilkley’s three Bradford district councillors have expressed concern that the ongoing campaign to get the Wharfe designated for ‘safe swimming’ fails to acknowledge the river’s poor safety record.
Part of the River Wharfe in Ilkley, which is a popular swimming and paddling spot, is to be added to the list of bathing waters next year, after months of campaigning.
A stretch of the River Wharfe in Ilkley will have its pollution levels monitored by the Environment Agency to ensure it is safe for swimming.
The move follows a campaign by local residents who said they had seen “human solid waste” on the river bank.
Becky Malby, from the Ilkley Clean River Group, said she was “absolutely over the moon” at the news.
Selected paragraphs from news reports on the Guardian, Yorkshire Post and BBC websites. Click on each to read more details.
Just as there were multiple issues over the Ilkley River Wharfe proposals, not all Cambridge people are sure that this is the best way forward…
This is the response from Newnham Croft Residents’ Association to Stephen Tomkins and Cam Valley Forum.
Dear Stephen and CVF
I am writing on behalf of Newnham Croft Residents Association in regard to your proposals for Sheeps Green.
The state of the river, as you show, is indeed shocking, and we all want to see water quality improved. However, we have concerns about designation of this small area as a bathing place for the following reasons:
1. Safety
There are major safety issues:
Scudamores now have many more punts, which come along this part of the river
There is now a canoe club on the site with 500 members situated next to the Learner pool, with canoes launching along the area in front of it. They are aware of the hazard this poses, and are suggesting that the bathing place should be at the former Ladies bathing place. This is adjacent to the Nature Reserve however, and increased noise and disturbance would be very detrimental to the wildlife there.
Even if lifeguards were provided, with so much activity in this part of the river it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for them to supervise swimming safely here, and there are real dangers – a child drowned here only a couple of years ago.
2. Environmental Impact
As your photos show, Sheeps Green used to be a popular bathing place with people from across the city, and many of us have very happy memories of swimming there in the 1970s. However, there was no car park then and although it was very busy on fine days, most of us walked or cycled.
There would now be serious issues of environmental capacity – Sheeps Green and Coe Fen are both protected green spaces, and Paradise, which was like a jungle in the 1970s is now a very popular city nature reserve.
The pressure on all these places and Lammas Land has grown enormously over the past year, and it seems that this will continue to increase as Cambridge expands and people are prepared to travel long distances by car to enjoy the places they have heard about on ‘what’s app’ and Facebook.There would need to be an environmental impact assessment as this proposal is likely to lead to a large increase in noise and disturbance that would be to be harmful to the wildlife and biodiversity, which should be given priority here.
3. Access
The only access for cars is down the Driftway, which leads off a rather hazardous junction. It is a narrow lane shared with pedestrians and cycles, and the small car park is used by shoppers, visitors to Lammas Land, Sheeps Green and Paradise as well as members of the Canoe Club. It is usually completely full already in the summer, with people parking (illegally) along the lane as well.
4. Facilities
The information given regarding the facilities available on site is rather misleading.
There are no changing facilities – the Canoe Club now occupies the site of the former bathing sheds and the couple of small rooms at the Learner Pool are only for children.
The 6 toilets at Lammas Land are not adequate for people using the park in the summer, let alone additional people coming to swim at a bathing place on the river.
There is no café, only a small kiosk serving drinks and ice- cream.
This is a small, environmentally sensitive area, and not suitable for building these facilities to meet the needs of visitors at a designated bathing place. We allwant to get the water quality in the Cam and its chalk streams improved, but a focus on this one small area could cause unintended harm.
As Stephen wrote to me, ‘Wearing my ecology/wildlife hat I am not so keen on expanding the use of that area for people in high summer, but it is unquestionably a gambit that will force the hand of Anglian Water to really make a much bigger effort to raise the water quality’
It should not be necessary to risk irreparable harm to a protected green space and nature reserve to get Anglian Water to improve water quality along the whole river, and I hope we will be able to work with you to achieve this .
We would be happy to attend a meeting to discuss it with you further.
Kind Regards Jean Glasberg Chair Newnham Croft Residents Association
Tony Booth started this petition – Save the Cam – on behalf of the Friends of the River Cam, are asking individuals and organisations to put pressure on local government, water companies and the Environment Agency in the Cambridge area to Save the River Cam and its tributaries by signing up to support the Cam River Charter.
Friends of the Cam letter to Cam Valley Forum
The Friends of the Cam have given consideration to the CVF proposal to apply for bathing quality status for the Cam at Sheep’s Green.
While we are eager to explore ways of restoring the health of the river, we are deeply concerned that choosing one small point on the river could, paradoxically, do more harm than good.
These facilities are currently either inadequate or would need to be provided, and this would have a hugely detrimental effect on this delicate nature reserve. Cambridge has doubled in size since Sheep’s Green was last a popular swimming location. 50 years ago locals would have travelled there by bike or walked. Today, however, official designation would draw people in from a much larger city, and from a further afield too, bringing traffic and related air pollution.
Sheep’s Green would become a huge draw, attracting far larger crowds than at any time in the past, to what is an environmentally sensitive water meadow, grazed by cows which, as Kim Wilkie pointed out in his talk to Friends of the Cam, have been a critical part of this finely balanced ecosystem for centuries. The cows kick up ground which allows wildflowers to seed, prevent larger plants from establishing and fertilise the soil. This ecology is also described here, in the Eastern Daily Press.
It is extremely likely that authorities would decide that the cows should be removed.
And the views of the Federation of Cambridge Residents’ Associations
Dear Cam Valley Forum,
Cam Valley Swimming Proposal
Lots of residents have contacted Federation of FeCRA committee members about the Forum’s application to make the area adjacent to the Canoe Club into a Designated Bathing Area. We are hearing citywide concern that this will endanger unique medieval green spaces, described by the landscape architect Tom Turner as equivalent to the best art in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
If the intention is to put pressure on Anglian Water residents wonder why Cam Valley Forum isn’t asking for a much bigger stretch of the river to be clean. Anglian Water’s track record on pollution is bad and yet despite that it is receiving substantial government funding from Homes England to relocate the sewage works.
We have previously flagged concerns [To the Cambridge City Council Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee. Click to read/download the PDF.] about what appears to be a well orchestrated lobby against cows grazing on the commons. There are concerns that a bathing place at Sheeps Green could lead to the loss of the cows which are an intrinsic part of the ecosystem there. This was raised again in our question to the Scrutiny Committee about the council’s support for plastic cows on the commons but not the real cows.
Cambridge commons losing their cows and, with that, their status as commons goes completely against all that the landscape architect Kim Wilkie said at the recent Friends of the Cam talk about a river landscape strategy and the role of grazed meadows in flood management.
Other concerns people have shared with us include the impact on biodiversity and on much loved city nature reserves and the big impact on local wildlife and nature large numbers of bathers, picknickers and sunbathers on the edge of Paradise Nature Reserve is likely to have.
Safety is another issue that has been raised. The punting route to Grantchester Meadows is very popular and the proximity of the very popular canoe club with a membership of 500, drawn from a wide catchment, makes this unsuitable for a designated swimming area. Wild swimming is also very popular and people are likely to come from miles. The car park is already full in the summer months, more people driving over for a swim would soon cause overflow.
Has there been any health and safety assessment about the likely number of users and congestion on the river ? Any traffic impact assessment ?
The recent report commissioned by the City Council and Cambridge Water included no impact assessment of river areas and/or river green spaces at risk or threatened by development.
Residents are asking if this bathing initiative relates to Natural Cambridgeshire’s plans for a Cam River Park corridor, the proposals for Accelerator Parks and the Wider Cambridge Visitors Project.
The lack of changing cabins and public toilets will require infrastructure which would not be acceptable to people in a protected green space. People have highlighted that Cambridge’s famously rus in urbe style of cows on the meadows is admired all over the world. This New York Times article was widely syndicated.
Allan Brigham, Cambridge’s champion of the commons, wrote :
“Whichever way you approach Cambridge, you see grass, trees and lots of sky. The college gardens, parks and commons bring nature right into the town. Cows graze on Midsummer Common just five minutes’ walk from Marks & Spencer – and in the summer office workers and students eat their lunch beneath the willows trees that line the river at Coe Fen. At weekends Jesus Green becomes a giant playing field with games of every kind – from skateboarding to lacrosse. These spaces are vital to people’s wellbeing,”
“It’s easy to take Cambridge’s open spaces for granted. But … the protection of these spaces is, to my mind, just as important as the preservation of Cambridge’s iconic buildings.”
For all these reasons the FeCRA committee cannot support this application. As we have said before, it would be great if Cam Valley Forum can work with FeCRA and Friends of the River Cam so that together we can urge the City Council to use its powers and that of the Environment Agency to be much more ambitious, ensure that the green spaces of the Cam are protected, that water quality along the whole river is improved and that the river is safe for all users.
Best wishes, Wendy Blythe, Chair For the FeCRA Committee
What are your views on this tentative proposal? You may send any comments to Cam Valley Forum at info@camvalleyforum.uk. If you would like to have a meeting to discuss the proposals, please mention this in your email. You may also leave (polite) comments on this website, below.
Cambridge Sustainable Food is looking for local growers to help support the Cambridge emergency food programme by planting extra crops and donating fruit, veg and herbs towards one of the eight community food hubs around Cambridge.
Chesterton Allotments donations
Last summer Cambridge Sustainable Food ran a Grow a Row campaign which saw nearly two tonnes of fresh produce grown and donated by individuals, families, streets, community projects, allotments and community farms, which went towards supporting the local emergency food response.
After the success of last year, Cambridge Sustainable Food are running the Grow a Row campaign again, and are looking for people to grow and share to help support the local Cambridge community. We welcome all donations of fresh fruit, veg and herbs to help keep our services running, and support those struggling to access food. You don’t have to be an experienced grower to help out – we welcome growers old and new. So even if you want to try growing some herbs on your windowsill, please get in touch!
Adopt a herb to grow on your windowsill
If you could “Grow a Row” extra, get your street involved in growing together, or if you find you have a glut on your hands that you would like to donate, please contact info@cambridgesustainablefood.org
For more information about “Grow a Row”, and online resources for first time growers, see Cambridge Sustainable Food’s Grow a Row webpage, here.
Editor’s note: If you’re unable to grow food but have surplus to donate…
