Dry Drayton Blog

Photos of the preview are now live on the village website www.drydrayton.net

Wow - Feast Week already. We are in for a real treat later this week as the Village Art Exhibition opens in the Church. The village artists have been painstakingly applying their watercolours and pastels over the last year in preparation for this wonderful event.

But an even greater artistic treat lies ahead as two village artists open their studios to the public as a part of the Cambridge Open Studios month. Mike Westbrook and Pauline Bunyan have open studios on the 19th/20th and 26th/27th July. And just down the road - don’t miss Nigel Payne’s open studio in Madingley on 5th/6th and 12th/13th July. If you are not familiar with Cambridge Open Studios you are missing one of the best events of the summer. You can read all about it at www.cambridgeopenstudios.co.uk and visit the studios during the four weekends of July. Look out for the yellow flags

We have been alerted to the fact that the famous Blue Bridge over the A428 between Dry Drayton and Hardwick has been damaged with grafitti. The police are now aware, so would no doubt be interested if anyone sees further damage taking place or recognises any of the art work in the photo below. Unfortunately they probably won’t be interested to know which dog walker leaves the piles of dog excrement on the bridge, which, combined wiith the grafitti, start to make this one of the less attractive wonders of Dry Drayton.

After receiving reports of what appeared to be spurious material on the village website, it was found that hackers had destroyed the databases holding information on events in the village and the village voice. All the event information has now been re-keyed into a static page on the site, making updates by those other than the webmaster no longer possible. The village voice has not been replaced. However, we welcome your comments and suggestions and any content for the web site via this blog.

There was a point last week where I didn’t think I’d be writing another entry to this blog. In fact the way that a dark blue Seat overtook four cars coming towards Dry Drayton along the Madingley Road on a completely blind bend may have left more than one of us unable to do anything at all! This road is potentially lethal as you cannot see round the bends through the hedgerows and as it still attracts large vehicles and idiot fast drivers who overtake on bends. The only safe thing to do is to keep your own speed down and be prepared for the unexpected on every bend.

Anyway - enough moaning - on to the two exciting developments in the village this week. First the grass has been cut again at long last. But of far more significance is the arrival with our June Newsletter of the first draft of the Dry Drayton Village Plan, prepared by Neil Harris, Nick Irish and Roger Swain. There are some interesting and no doubt controversial proposals contained therein - especially on allowing the village to grow by 50%, encroaching on the hallowed greenbelt, and introducing a range of attractive new ideas which will no doubt lead to an increase in the Parish precept. There is much to commend the draft plan, which will no doubt lead to a greener and more interesting Dry Drayton. The writers are seeking our views from now until 1st September - you can contribute to the debate by giving feedback on this item or contacting the writers - their e-mails are in the draft document - if you need another copy of the document, it can be downloaded from www.drydrayton.net

Before the cut..

Below are some images from just a couple of days ago showing a sunnier, warmer Dry Drayton. These show the footpath between Pettitts Lane and Oakington Road. The alternate Paul Scarlet Midland Hawthorns and Silver Birches were, I believe, planted by Charlie Searle some years ago, and what a fitting sight they make to remind us of him and his love of the village. Some of the best tended grass in the village can also be found along this path, while elsewhere in the village the grass seems to have outstripped the capabilities of the Parish Council and their contractor.

This is Footpath No 11 in Footpaths and Walks of Dry Drayton, 2001, Ed Nick Irish. Have you walked all the Dry Drayton Footpaths yet?

This week the BBC is running a series of news items based on a poll they have commissioned by ICM research into neighbours and neighbourhoods. These links will take you to articles on the BBC site dated Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th May. Over a fifth of the people surveyed nationally believed that neighbourhoods have become less friendly in the last five years. More than a third of those surveyed wouldn’t trust anyone in their street with their keys. Half of those surveyed haven’t spoken to more than six people in their street in the last week. One in ten had not spoken to anyone in their street in the last week.

How would Dry Drayton fare in such a survey? Are we becoming less friendly here as everywhere else seems to be in the UK? Is this a symptom of the ageing population here? This survey puts great store in changes in the level of contact, but is that the right thing to be measuring? Isn’t the quality of contact even more important than quantity. Perhaps the real question is “How is Dry Drayton faring in terms of positive, supportive, non-aggressive, non-critical, old fashioned neighbourliness?” 

Dry Drayton features this year, for the first time we think, on the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Exhibition website. On this site are photographs from over 50 countries, all taken on World Pinhole Camera Day, April 27th, 2008. These are all taken using cameras without lenses.

The exhibitors say of the collection “They also share an additional and less formal characteristic: the sincere enthusiasm of their creators who, by participating in this collective event, shared individual visions and techniques. Hence the amazing diversity of subjects, cameras, techniques and photographic materials combined in this exhibit!. Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day was established to celebrate the joy of simple creativity using the medium of lensless photography. We want to show that, from a device as simple as a cardboard box with a tiny hole, you can create inspiring images. Minimal technology and cost: Maximum Passion and Sensitivity!”

The Dry Drayton image was taken at the top of Madingley Road on 27th April. We hope that it has not compromised the security of the very important resident who drove up demanding to know why a photograph was being taken in her village, because she didn’t want anybody to photograph her house.

The image is here: http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/2008/index.php?id=1250

In response to a query to the web site - it doesn’t seem that there is a local government election in Dry Drayton today - It’s Cambridgeshire County Council in 2009 and South Cambridgeshire in 2011.

Dry Drayton Cheese Lovers will be delighted to learn that after a three month absence the Cambridge Cheese Company is back operating in All Saints Passage Cambridge - don’t be put off by the scaffolding down the passage - they really are back. Treat yourself to some delicious cheese when you next go to town.