Landslide at Old Roar Gill in Hastings, East Sussex

SussexWorld

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

Transcript

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.

03:08 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended