ABOUT 60 people attended a meeting in the town hall in Marlborough last Monday to develop the idea of it becoming a transition town.

The focus of transition towns is to turn back the clock to the days before the internal combustion engine when people lived, worked and shopped in their local communities.

The town council has already supported the concept of Marlborough becoming a transition town and making plans for life when supplies of oil begin to run low.

There is a growing movement on both sides of the Atlantic to plan for a society without cheap oil, one where people would live and work in their own community relying on walking or pedal power instead of cars.

Coun Rich Pitts, appointed by the town council to take forward the transition town idea, chaired the meeting and introduced speakers from the Marlborough Climate Pledge group. He that although Marlborough was “a real rural idyll” the prospect of petrol costing £10 a litre had to be taken seriously.

He introduced a 45-minute film made in the US called End of Suburbia which calls for “a return to a new urbanism where everything in a community is walkable”.

Dr Sam Page, who is co- ordinating Marlborough’s transition town bid, urged people to think now rather than later.

Totnes in Devon was the first English transition town and even has its own Totnes Pound currency.

For more information, visit www.transitiontownmarlborough. blogspot.com or call Dr Page on (01672) 514652 or Coun Pitts on (01672) 512087.