After Glenfield Lane was closed and Junction 21A opened in the 90’s the bridge became just a dead end to the village. The parish plan may have an impact but the bridge has been the focus of some actvity.
First we had the travellers camp under the bridge with their fires which made it an intimidating place to get through. The Council put the gate in place and when the travellers came back the rasied verge was created. Since then it has been a traveller-free zone.
Teenagers now use the bridge area. Not all are bad – they play football most of the time, someone comes down to play cricket at the weekends with his (grand)children. Others use the bridge for walking, cycling, horse-riding through. For the teenagers it’s somewhere dry, relatively safe and there are no windows their football can break. There are always a few that spoil it and in this case probably give all the teenagers there a bad name.
Before the bridge cars will congregate late at night and there is suspected drug use happening. Some drug paraphernalia has been seen but nothing dangerous yet. Now it is home to art expressionists, you’ve guessed it….graffiti. Under the bridge though there has been a marked increase in graffitti and it’s crude graffitti at that. Graffitti can cause more graffitti so it is important that this be cleaned up.
Yesterday something happened to combat this.
Our beat constable supervised youngsters blocking out the “art” on the walls of the bridge and we can only assume they were the perpetrators.
Whilst it can only be commended to catch the culprits and set them to work at cleaning up their mess, to be honest the whitewash looks more unsightly than the graffiti. Graffiti dulls and wears with time blending itself in, but great blocks of white looks more like an essay that has had the bad language tippexed out.
It is easy to criticise though and the proper equipment for removing graffitti could be too dangerous for the untrained but the arguably the white gives a place for more graffitti?
This painting over was first noticed under the Ratby / Glenfield M1 bridge but time has yet to tell there whether it sends a message to those who would deface the bridgework. But these blocks of white are ugly – maybe a different colour would be less obtrusive? Should there be somewhere in the village where young people can ‘decorate’ ? If so, where? Maybe the bridge? If not then what can be done about this? There is no easy answer.
I ride thru most working days, the graffitti as long as its not racist, sexist obscene etc. does not bother me, this is not a pretty place and never will be. There would be alot worse places in the village to get painted, although none of our perpertrators seem to be a new banksy but I can see why it would upset people
I’m more bothered about the plants at the gateways that could do with a trim and smoother ramps on the cycle way bit
It’ll be interesting to see the feedback from the Parish Plan and if there is any on the bridge – I see it as a vital link for non car traffic out of that end of the village