(Just missing the newly erected Clinton Estate and Environment Agency seat marking the opening of this wildlife site)

From a correspondent:

Today we lost a magnificent oak tree which sat on the cliff  at the end of a granary lane garden,  on the western LORP path.

It is only pure luck that no one was killed…(if it had gone yesterday when the path was crowded it would have been a different story) as you will see from the photos it has taken a huge chunk out of the bank and has fallen over  the  path and a fair  way into the estuary.

The granary lane residents  in nearby properties  have on numerous recent occasions   asked Clinton Devon Estates to check the safety of the trees . Concerns have been raised regarding recent slippages and tree movement ,  however  not  on this scale.

The bottom of the cliff where this tree has fallen has been saturated with vile stagnant water for months …it doesn’t  drain  away and concerns were raised  with LORP about damage  to the cliff. The original planning permission  was to raise the path by a metre to protect the cliff, but this was amended  without consultation with  local residents and the path remained the same level.   Hence the sea just rolls in and gets trapped.  Has this affected the trees?   Who knows but it certainly won’t have helped.

Is the path safe to walk?  I would say not…the trees are precariously hanging on, some almost horizontal…anything  which was beneath them has been cleared for LORP and personally I think the path should be closed until CDE has carried out a full inspection of all the trees and published the findings, and deemed the path safe.

Those trees have received little or no maintenance for many years…most probably in the  too difficult or too expensive box for Clinton to deal with…but a proper survey should always have been carried out before opening a busy footpath!