Ashford Ring Road

As regards the ring road, they've already started the first stage; extending County Mall, opening up Church Road to trafficand limiting traffic up Bank street. It's actually a very difficult situation I think.

The ring road has been strangling Ashford for years and needs to be broken if the town centre is to develop, and considering that the town is expanding at a rate of knots and swallowing up surrounding villages, to have a centre the size it is now is arguably ridiculous. Small shops and coffee bars, with little room to invite in decent stores. The centre itself is probably comparable in size to Sandwich town centre at the moment. The trouble is, to create a perfect solution, the entire area need to be flattened and start again, which is obviously not an option.

Yes, they are going to make it two way, although I didn't know what speed limit was going to be imposed. I can see the logic of doing that; it will mean that pedestrians will no longer take their lives in their hands crossing, and make the surrounding land viable for development (old cattle market, Victoria industrial estate area for examples) because people will actually be able to get to it. I think drivers will have an interesting time of it, because the junctions seem to be rather... complex. Or maybe they just look like that on paper.

Anyway, it's going to be a mess, I don't think anyone denies that, but they have to start somewhere and this seems to be the most viable solution at this time. Apparently. Not that we saw any other solutions - or maybe we did and I missed them. Mel has a *lot* to say on the subject, btw! There's supposed to be a Park and Ride or two in the offing somewhere. I think at Orbital Park, probably where the travellers are squatting. Or maybe Eureka Park where the cows are - not squatting.


On a retail type note, apparently Debenhams and Next are due to move in with decent sized stores (The Next we have now doesn't count; it's the size of my back garden), but I am a bit concerened that we'll end up with the dregs of the shopping world. I love the designer outlet - for what it is, and we have great big stores in the retail parks out by J9 and 10. In town we have BHS just moved in where Littlewoods used to be in County Mall - but it's the scrag end outlet version. Sainsburies in town closed and gave over to Wilkinsons, the nice building on the corner of Goddington road which would have been prime for any decent shop went to Lidls. Am thinking we'll end up with Next Factory outlet, and whatever the Debenhams equivalent of cheap and cheerfull is.

The only 'upgrade' we have that I can think of, is Index went and we got a decent sized Ottakers instead. On the other hand, Tesco has an 'Extra' on J10, a regular at Park Farm, and an 'Express' on Hythe Road. Maybe they'll be looking to put something else in the town centre, because we don't any supermarkets unless you count M&S or Iceland. Or Lidls. And I only discovered yesterday that we no longer have a Curry's or Dixons or equivalent in town any more. So yup, still going to Canterbury to shop!