WITH the impending opening of the new bridge over Tavistock Canal, might I hope that at last this town is beginning to make more of what it has got? For too long this has been left to lie derelict, shabby and forgotten.
We have a beautiful river and a beautiful canal, and we make very little use of them. In the whole town, there is not one cafe, one bar, one pub or one restaurant that has a terrace overlooking the water, where one can sit and admire the beauty of the riverbank or the canal side.
Recently I was up in Crediton and was very impressed by the new Wetherspoons pub there. With its light and airy modern conservatory/atrium, it was so smart. Maybe the powers that be in Tavistock might look at utilising the riverbank more by bringing in a smart new pub or restaurant?
As for the River Tavy, I cannot walk by the so-called 'Salmon Ladder' without thinking of Pitlochry and how much better we could make it all look here.
Tavistock is 'preserved'. It is so much in the past that it is to the point of the absurd. True conservation is about management and improvement, not just keeping things the same forever. Are we saying that this town is so perfect that there is nothing we could do to make it any better? Are we so arrogant?
Any town in Brittany with an ounce of pride would have enhanced the canal years ago and made it so attractive that artists would sit there painting the scene.
Yet the best we can do is put in some tarmac paths and a few standard (and no doubt ugly) street lights.
Surely, at the very least, we could string some lights along the canal side to make it look pretty?
Come on, Tavistock, we are the capital of Dartmoor. Isn't it time we started doing a lot better than this?
Roger Clarke
Monksmead
Callington Road
Tavistock