Sheila Bearne, of Kingsteignton, writes:

How I agree with Jen Williams, Letters page, April 11.

In the 1980s my late parents lived on the Woodmere housing estate which backs onto Hackney marshes. And when my father passed away in 1989, we had a bench placed by the bridge leading to the orchard, saying, how he walked these lovely marshes with his dog Honey.

In those days the marshes were beautiful! I expect a lot of people do not even know there were ponds teeming with bird life, swans, ducks, moorhens, etc – all overgrown now.

The children from the local school were taken there for nature walks, and my late husband and I went one evening to see the netting and ringing of the reed warblers with the ranger.

I am a dog owner who clears up after their dog, but stopped going there because of all the mess left by irresponsible owners, but I recently went over there to see if things had improved. Far from it, in fact it was worse !

The stream is full of debris, overgrown, and silted up. my dog went into it at one point and came out covered in what I am convinced was human sewage.

It seems to me that money has been spent on Decoy and Stover Park and the new cycle track along the racecourse, but our once lovely marshes have been ignored.

So come on, councillors, take a walk on the wild side – but mind where you tread – and see for yourself the sorry state the marshes are in. Find some cash to return them to the once lovely state my father knew. He would be horrified.

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