Chancellor exercisers, please respect our home

THE EDITOR: The public is now exercising outdoors once again.

This letter reaches out to those who have made Lady Chancellor Road the centre of their fitness regimens over the past few years. We ask you to spare a thought for us, the residents. We ask you to imagine how you would feel if the same scenario was happening outside your front door every single day.

As a resident of Lady Chancellor Road, this is what it means seven days a week: hundreds of joggers, walkers, cyclists, aerobic fanatics, weightlifters, etc. Boom boxes, shrieks of laughter and shouted conversations shattering the birdsong and tranquillity from early o’clock. Hundreds of food containers, glass and plastic bottles casually tossed onto the road and drains in spite of the 12 regularly maintained bins provided. Gym mats lying in the middle of the road.

Driving is a torment of time-consuming frustration and danger as people exercise, sometimes three abreast, on both sides of the road, including blind corners. To dare sound one’s horn in warning to cars coming in the opposite direction (whose drivers are also compelled to drive in the middle of the road) elicits offended verbal abuse from both pedestrians and cyclists.

For six-eight weeks the peace is shattered on Saturdays when the volume on pre-Carnival music trucks is so loud it can be heard from a mile away and sets off car alarms as they “Pied-Piper” their way up and down the hill with hundreds chipping behind in their wake.

On regular days and weekends cars are often parked three-thick on the lookout and stretch for a third of a mile along the roadside at the bottom with the addition of food vendors and their attendant litter adding to the congestion.

Thirty years ago, Chancellor was a dumping ground for mattresses, old stoves, dead animals and bodies, etc. Thieves and rapists notoriously lurked in the overgrown bush on the lookout waiting for couples to “park.” Once a year I would beg the regional council to cut the razor grass which encroached onto the road. To use it as a fitness track was not only unheard of, but would have been impossible. Upside: the quiet and wildlife were a joy.

About 20 years ago, a small group of residents got together, cleared the dumps. They broke down public garbage bins. They replanted trees, cut fire traces and verges and installed ten-plus bins. This continues – due to the generosity and/or hard work of a handful of private individuals who still live here. There is no maintenance carried out by the council.

These last lockdown months have reminded me of what it was. It has been truly wonderful to once again be surrounded by peace, birdsong and watch creatures re-emerge – agouti, mongoose, butterflies, iguana, etc.

Though we cannot turn back the clock 20 years, I make this appeal to those who come to enjoy this oasis on the outskirts of our capital city: please respect those whose home this is, and keep in mind that it is us who keep the hill beautiful for everyone, including you, to enjoy.

BARBARA JARDINE

Lady Chancellor