I READ with interest your article on the fact that the Hilperton Gap road is to get the go-ahead, despite the county council's inability to finish the inner Trowbridge relief road, or taking into account the proposed alternative route by Hilperton Parish Council, round the Paxcroft Mead estate.

I see that Kate Hayes (Friends of the Gap) says that the Gap is a wonderful place for people to fly kites, play cricket and walk their dogs.

I have lived here 20 years and the only recreational pursuits I have observed taking place by local residents is the walking of their dogs, allowing them to ., a word which rhymes with Gap, and for which they do not clear up the mess.

My children are not allowed any longer to go in there because of the mess (dogs') they bring home on their shoes.

Most of the Friends of the Gap group are those whose houses back on to the Hilperton Gap e.g. Victoria Road and other roads leading off it. They are not affected by the serious traffic problems caused by the traffic signed at the Fieldways roundabout directing traffic through Church Street and Hill Street, Hilperton.

Why not try sending traffic to the Canal Road Trading Estate, Bradford on Avon, Staverton, Holt and Bath through Victoria Road (the quickest route until the inner relief road is finished), then the residents would know what the people living in Hilperton have suffered for many years?

Wiltshire County Council and the district council assured Hilperton Parish Council that the amount of traffic flowing through the Paxcroft Mead estate would only be at the same level as the traffic flowing through Wiltshire Drive in Trowbridge. They must have been joking (or irresponsible).

MRS S MANNING,

Hill Street, Hilperton