Here’s the link to take part: https://south-and-vale-landscape-character-assessment-luc.hub.arcgis.com/  Mark a location on the interactive map and then make your comments on the right side of the page. The deadline is 29 September 2023.

The Vale of White Horse District Council is conducting an online consultation to ask local people about the qualities we value in our local landscape – such as

• peaceful space for wildlife and people to share,
• the beautiful countryside of the Vale Way that leads from Faringdon, past Wicklesham Quarry and then forks across Ringdale to Fernham,
• magnificent views from the Mid-Vale Ridge hilltops of West Oxfordshire Heights Conservation Target Area,
• woods and streams that form the setting of the River Ock, and provide habitats for deer, owls, otters and a variety of bird and insect life, 
• dark night skies, unpolluted by electric light, where we can frequently observe the Milky Way.

The character and qualities of landscape can’t be divided up, so that some are kept while others are sacrificed. Neither can they be artificially created somewhere else, as some developers and planners claim to believe. Anyone who walks along the Vale Way and its connecting footpaths beside Wicklesham Quarry will see drifts of pink orchids in summer, loaded blackberry bushes on Galley Hill in September, and the tracks of deer, foxes, rabbits and birds covering the fields after it snows. If you take a walk around dusk the chances are you’ll see deer, as well as buzzards, foxes, owls and kites. One of my favourite walks is through Little Coxwell and Gorse Farm up to Galley Hill, then across to Ringdale’s iron-age fortifications of banks and ditches. It is an idyllic spot, absolutely quiet and peaceful, with views of White Horse Hill, and honeysuckle climbing into the trees. Even the deer just look up casually and carry on grazing as if you weren’t there.

This landscape has supported human settlements for two and half thousand years and probably far longer, and people have extracted the coral stone of the Mid-Vale ridge for centuries to build stone cottages and many of the older houses of Faringdon itself. But the landscape has always been allowed to recover. That is all we are asking for now: to Protect Wicklesham Quarry from Development, and preserve its rare species, vulnerable habitat, and the unique geological resources of one of the oldest SSSIs in the country, that help us understand the origins of the landscape itself.

Please register your thoughts on the value and vulnerability of the beautiful landscapes of the Western Vale before 29 September.