WHAT is happening to our countryside? Seventy years living in Tinhead and Bratton, one could see all up over the hills, because the rabbits kept the vegetation down and the farmers cut their hedges and cleaned their ditches. Now with all these environment people about, things have been allowed to grow wild. 
And planting trees all over the place, often too close to the roads. It’s all right planting little trees but they grow into big trees and slowly spread and are now making driving dangerous, along Westbury Road for example where large lorries have to move out into the road so as not to hit them.
Now everything has started to encroach everywhere. The lanes and footpaths and streams are getting overgrown with bushes and worst of all trailing blackberries are now hanging down into the lanes and nobody seems to bother to tidy it up any more.
Bring back old Bill Cox and his horse Prince and cart, and Spider, the local roadmen who keep it tidy, as time progresses things are going to get worse.Someone will get caught on the brambles in the end. I hope it does not catch them in the eye.
Winter is coming and soon all the leaves and hedge cuttings plus grass, which is never picked up nowadays, will wash down and block the drains and manholes and make another mess, causing flooding.
What will it be like in another year? What is the answer? Bring back the rabbits. Should have got rid of the rats instead of rabbits.
Johnny Stokes
Church Road
Bratton