Letter: Transport hell for the New Forest's semi-rural

SIR – It is hard to sometimes understand letters published from those who live in towns and cities complaining about the lack of bus services. What about those of us who live in rural or even semi-rural areas?

Here in Burley we use to have the 13A, a Hants & Dorset green-coloured bus service running every two hours between Bournemouth and Southampton. We had another into Christchurch.

When I was a lad, a bus use to run between Ringwood and Burley on market day (Wednesday) and Saturday and that went behind Burley Street, along Forest Road, Lyndhurst Road/Chapel Lane, Beechwood Lane, Bennetts Lane (back then that was all Bisterne Close) to Durmast Cross Roads.

We also had a railway station at Holmsley. Who shut down those services? The Conservatives. In other words, the operators were not being supported. And yet we the taxpayer were expecting to receive what we were meant to be paying for.

I have an OAP bus pass but have never used it. As explained, we have no bus service.

We are told to get out of our cars and use public transport! And before you say we New Forest people are all wealthy and can afford to run a car, no – a lot of us are struggling.

My council tax is now more than a third of my basic state pension. Add on the cost of living. My home is probably the last not to have ever been modernised in the New Forest. Why? Because I was a carer for most of my adult life.

In the meantime, we have again low-flying aeroplanes going into Bournemouth Airport polluting the New Forest. But hey ho, lets have the Red Arrows do their annual display.

How anyone can be interested in watching lumps of moulded metal flying around is a little beyond me.

Then again, we have all those people complaining they have not managed to get their passport renewed to go off and kill our planet.

I am not a killjoy, I am a realist.

Richard Grant,
Burley