Path funding decision delayed (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Path funding decision delayed

THE people behind a pioneering new footpath have to wait to discover if Stow-on-the-Wold Town Council will help fund it.

A town council meeting deferred, until the end of the financial year in March, a decision about whether to award a grant towards the creation the three-quarter-mile path between Stow and neighbouring Lower Swell village.

Swell Parish Council is laying the path that would enable pedestrians to walk more safely alongside the B4068 road between the village and Stow.

Swell became the first parish council within Cotswold District to try to construct a path alongside a main road, a project it undertook to mark the millennium.

Volunteers have already laid the first half of the path, running eastward from Lower Swell's Spa Cottages, through Abbotswood estate and on to Hunter's Spinney.

With about 60 percent of the route falling within Stow, Swell asked the town council for help to finance the £12,000 second stage that would cross the road to Stow cricket pavilion to join an existing footpath.