Valerie Myers from Save Old Roar Gill talks about the recent landslide there. More about the group can be read on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/810562710561904
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00:00 I represent an organisation called Save Old Royal Gill. Our campaign is based on
00:09 promoting the restoration of the Gill and looking after its future as a
00:15 nature reserve and as a good place for tourists to come to. We've been really
00:21 shocked by what we saw with the landslip. We came down here when we heard
00:27 that there were cracks in the in the path coming along from Gillside Avenue.
00:32 We walked along the path and it kind of did look cracked but we didn't think
00:37 anything too much of it at that stage. That was just a day and a half before
00:41 the landslip happened so it just shows how quickly these things can develop.
00:46 It's been really bad, so bad for the residents. We really feel for them. Not
00:52 very good for the Gill either. This part of the Gill, the old raw part of the
00:57 Gill, has been left a little bit to its own devices. One of the things our
01:04 campaign would like to do is to see that part of the Gill restored so that people
01:09 can walk along it and see the big waterfall that used to be a major
01:13 tourist attraction in the Victorian era. It's huge. I mean it's not called Old Raw
01:18 for nothing. It's very big and makes a lot of noise and we just like people to
01:22 have access to it. We have put some plans into the council suggesting what we
01:29 think could be done but be done by a mixture of them and volunteers in the
01:35 future and those plans actually have been accepted and you know they've
01:41 been quite positive about them. We need to wait and see what happens. Southern
01:46 Water have organized an ecological survey of the Gill and I think they're
01:50 going to suggest various things that need to be done as well after the people
01:54 who are doing the survey are. So hopefully this could be a turning point if you
02:01 like for the Gill as a whole and perhaps people's attention being on it, perhaps
02:06 the council's attention being on it a little bit more will help it will help
02:11 us to achieve our kind of aims really to get it back into the right sort of
02:17 state for people and wildlife to enjoy. Where I'm standing now is on the footpath
02:22 that leads from Old Raw Road to the Old Raw footbridge which goes over the
02:28 waterfall. It's such a shame because this used to be, I mean until last week, was a
02:33 very popular walking spot for people with their dogs and it was a great great
02:39 place to access the falls. You can't see a lot of them in the summer but in the
02:43 winter you can get a really good or you could get a really good view of them and
02:47 so it's really sad. We're just hoping that you know once this is all settled
02:55 that this path can come back into use again because it's a lovely little
03:02 I don't know like a wooden walk within the town really.
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