Skipton and our market towns need better bus services – Yorkshire Post Letters

ANDREW Vine’s essay about our market towns (The Yorkshire Post, August 1) on Yorkshire Day clearly describes the benefits they offer.

A stroll though a town centre market is infinitely better than any out of town supermarket. Obviously if they are traffic free that is even better.

Skipton has closed its High Street on market days during the summer and strolling down the street with no cars or traders vans is a delight.

But the price in Skipton has been high for those who do not have a car. The impact on bus services has been severe and large parts of the town are
 left with no buses on market days.

The diversion routes take the buses away from Gargrave Road and Grassington Road and they have already ceased on The Bailey (Harrogate Road). This leaves residents in Overdale Grange, Overdale Park, Greenacres and the new housing development at Corner Fields with no buses to Skipton, Ilkley, Otley or Leeds.

When the planning application for Corner Fields was considered, it was stated that it would have good accessibility by public transport. Now it has none, even before the last houses are completed. There are bus stops but no buses.

If the delights of our markets are to be enjoyed by everyone, please can local authorities ensure that bus services can continue to serve the centres for the benefit of those without cars, or who do not wish to clog our towns with more cars, and especially those who are disabled or with limited mobility.

From: Ian Burn, Withernsea.

I WAS born and brought up in Withernsea and have lived here most of my life (The Yorkshire Post, August 1).

I associate the corruption With-er-un-sea with the hordes of Hull-ites who, in years gone by, arrived by the train load as day trippers.

If you talk to people in the town today and they use this pronunciation, or the equally appalling abbreviation With., it tells me that they are either visitors or in-comers. Real Withernsea people use the correct pronunciation With-ern-sea.

From: Geoff Wood, Tholthorpe.

ON St George’s Day, 1955, my wife Margaret and I spent the first night of our honeymoon at The Crown Hotel, Bawtry, on our way to the South West, which we remembered this April, when we celebrated our Blue Emerald wedding anniversary, locked down in our home in Tholthorpe, where we have lived ever 
since (The Yorkshire Post, August 4).

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James Mitchinson

Editor