BLACK MOUNT BUGLE

COMMUNITY COUNCIL NEWS

Enclosed with this edition of the Black Mount Bugle is a copy of our Community Survey 2000. Every household in the Black Mount Community Council area is asked to discuss the issues raised and to complete the questions in the survey. As you are no doubt aware, we have been very involved in issues such as the poor state of local roads, the speed of traffic through our villages and the need for improvements to our electricity supply. We would like you to tell us which issues you are most concerned about so that we can prioritise our actions for liaison with the appropriate authorities.

Please return the survey by Friday, 23rd June 2000 by using either the 'freepost' envelope provided or, to reduce our costs,
to your local Community Councillor listed below.

Ian Kerry, The Beehive, Dolphinton
Chris Miller, Walston House, Walston
Morna Munro, 24 Main Street, Newbigging
Barry Rosindale, Meldons, Elsrickle

The Community Council arranges several social events each year for local residents. This is organised through our Social
Group. In recent months the membership of this group has been reduced because people have moved out of our local
area. If you have a few hours to spare and could help us, please telephone Anne Hutchison ( 01968 682256) to find
out more.

Joan Highton

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BUGLE

Jane and I recall our pleasure in reading the welcome home message in the Bugle on our return from overseas. The Community Council wish to continue, in a consistent manner, to record the arrivals and departures, the births, marriages and obituaries and other family events occurring in our community. At the same time it is appropriate to respect the wishes of those families who wish to retain their privacy. Consequently, Liz Gilfoyle or any member of the committee will be happy to accept contributions from the families or friends of those who wish the community to share in their family occasions.

Barry Rosindale

BLACK MOUNT SPORTS NIGHT

Sports Night will take place on Friday 26th May at 6.30pm at Roberton Mains. Please come along and join in. Test your speed, stamina and strength and be well rewarded with prizes in kind and free juice.

ELSRICKLE WRI

Members and friends were joined by Kaimend WRI on their annual outing on 10th May. Making for the Lake District a stop was made at Gretna Green for coffee. Then a visit to a shoe factory, Lakeland Plastics and finally High Tea before the journey back home. An enjoyable day was had by all.

Next on the calendar is the Flower Show on Saturday 26th August at 2.30pm. Please note this is now open to all who wish to show. Entry forms are available from Alice Barrie or any committee member.

Margaret Leiper

NEWS FROM WALSTON PRIMARY SCHOOL

The recent good weather has encouraged us all out into the sunshine and recent visitors to Walston would see the nursery children enjoying activities outside in the playground. The P.4 –7 children have been making use of the High School Playing fields for athletics. Recently P.5-7 took part in a Small Schools’ Netball Tournament. They did not win any games but they enjoyed the experience and coped very well with their defeats! This term there are other opportunities for the children to take part in sporting activities – football at Symington and cross-country running at Wiston for example. So we will keep our fingers crossed that the weather stays fine.

In recent years Walston Primary School has had an entry into Biggar Gala Day. Our floats have been very successful and we have won quite a few prizes. We are always looking for help in this venture and if any of you are artistically talented we would be delighted if you would give us a hand. Even if you have no connection with the school, you would be made most welcome. Just give us a ring.

Mrs Sim is working very hard with P.1-3 who are doing an enterprise topic. They will be running their own tuck shop – baking the cakes and sweets themselves and then selling them to the other children in the school. Last year they grew garden plants from seed and then organised a plant sale. They made a very healthy profit – some of which they sent to a charity and they spent the rest on a construction kit for the classroom. Hopefully they will be as successful this year.

Primary 7 visit the High School this term and the nursery children who are coming to school after the summer will spend some time in the infant room. Added to this we have reports, parents nights and trips to organise!!

School staff and pupils will start a well-deserved rest on Wednesday 28th June although the nursery continues to meet during the summer holidays.

Please contact the school if you have any questions or comments.
LORAINE KINGHORN, HEADTEACHER – WALSTON PRIMARY SCHOOL 01899 810234 WALSTON PRE-FIVE GROUP

The New Year Term was once again a busy time for the children of the Pre-Five Group. A nursery rhyme theme was the topic and the children’s efforts are displayed as a beautiful frieze on the school wall, with silver bells, cockleshells, Humpty Dumpty and the cow that jumped over the moon.
February brought round our annual inspection which again we passed with flying colours. However, in March we were sad to lose the services of Catriona Cochrane, our assistant playleader, who left to work at Rascals Nursery, where we wish her well.
The run up to Easter saw the group making Mother’s Day cards, Easter cards and also baskets for an Easter Egg Hunt around the school. However, we had to finish our term on another sad note as we said goodbye to our playleader Ann Beckett. Ann had been with the group from the very start in 1997 when she volunteered to take the group until a permanent Playleader was found! We will miss her enthusiasm, resourcefulness, sense of fun and, of course, her ability to get the best out of the children. All the parents and children of the Pre-Five Group wish her and her family the very best as they settle into their new home.
The group would also like to intimate their thanks to Sheena Dickson and Sheila Kinloch who are running the group in the meantime.
Anyone interested in coming along to join the fun will be most welcome.
The Group meets in Walston Primary School on Wednesday mornings from 9.15am till 11.45am and is open to 2½ year olds to 5 year olds.
Contact Mara Orr on 810219 for information.

OUR RURAL ROADS

I feel sure that we have all been complaining for a very long time about the appalling state of our roads. However, it now appears as if most of us have simply been complaining to each other.

The new Black Mount Community Council has decided to tackle this important issue head on. As a first step, we asked to accompany a Roads Inspector on a routine survey to find out what exactly what they did. As a Community Council we were not convinced that South Lanarkshire Council judged the problems of potholes and road surfaces generally, as importantly and as unsafe as we, the residents, do and we were correct in part. The survey we accompanied took place on 24 February on a route that we chose; the Biggarshiels Road from Elsrickle to Biggar. The frenzy of repair activity that followed that survey was, I believe, a clear indication of the degree of embarrassment felt by the Roads Department at what we were able to show them.

However, the Roads Department was able to confirm that they had only one complaint registered on their database about this specific road for the previous 14 months. Whilst A and B class roads are said to be inspected every month, unclassified roads may only be inspected once a year. In the intervening periods the Roads Department relies on public complaint to monitor the condition of rural roads. To maintain the pressure on the South Lanarkshire Council, for substantial improvements to be made, it is therefore very important to direct our serious complaints at them and to be very specific about the nature of the defect(s).

Here is a guide to effective complaining about the poor state of our road network in South Lanarkshire.

Do
! Call Lanark Roads Department on direct dial 01555 663300 or via the switchboard on 01555 663000.
! State that you wish to register a complaint about a fault in a road surface.
! Be sure to give a clear description of the road defect and its location.
! Insist on a computer generated reference number for your complaint.
! Insist on a computer generated reference number for your complaint.
! Call back if the defect is serious and work has not started within 10 days, give your reference number and ask for a progress report.
! Speak to a member of Black Mount Community Council in case of difficulty.

Do Not

! Make a general complaint about a road or roads.
! Call the RALF freephone number. They cannot give you a reference number for your complaint.
! Expect an engineer to register your complaint. If you want to speak to an engineer then make that a separate call.

A complaint, by itself is not enough, it needs to be followed up. The annual maintenance budget for Clydesdale’s 1,000 kilometres of roads is exceptionally £1,900,000 this year. It costs on average £5 to fill a pothole but £1,000 to install a repair patch just 12 metres long across the width of a rural road. A survey last year showed that the SLC needs in excess of £85,000,000 to restore the road network to a satisfactory standard. That sort of money can only come from the Scottish or Westminster Parliaments. We all need to make an effort to speak or write to our MP and MSPs if we are to stop our roads reverting to medieval cart tracks.

Barry Rosindale.

OUTDOOR DIARY

Best value booklet of the year must surely be the 2000-2001 edition of South Lanarkshire Council's Outdoor Diary. This delightful FREE publication is thoughtfully designed, beautifully illustrated, packed with facts and full of fascinating things to do in the Great Outdoors locally and slightly further afield, every week from now until next March. Go badger and bat watching, river and pond dipping, heritage trailing and kite making. Meet moths and minibeasts at Calderglen and create your own environmental art at Strathclyde Country Park. Enjoy wild flowers and wonderful woodlands, picnics, hikes and orienteering, and loads of family fun. You can even go September stargazing in Strathaven and celebrate International Bog Day 2000 at Langlands Moss near East Kilbride! There's a small charge for guided walks but many events are free. Go on - switch off the computer, unplug the telly and head for fresh air adventure! The Outdoor Diary is produced through a partnership between South Lanarkshire Council's Countryside Ranger Service and the South Lanarkshire River Valleys Project. You can pick up your copy of the Diary at Community and Sports Centres, Museums, Libraries and Tourist Information Offices.

Morna Munro

DOLPHINTON WRI
We held a very successful Table Top Sale on Saturday 1st April. Twelve tables selling everything from pottery, greeting cards, aromatherapy, home baking and bric a brac. A most enjoyable time was had by all and over £200 raised for Rural funds.
A meeting was held on Wednesday 5th April when Sandra Parish extolled the virtues of Aloe Vera. We saw examples of veterinary cures and heard how it can be very good for a variety of complaints including colitis and asthma. A new committee was elected and we have already had a meeting to discuss next year’s syllabus
Our next big event is the Flower Show on Saturday 19th August. If you are keen to compete Schedules are available from Nan McQueenie telephone number: 01968.682355

Anne Hutchison

The Lanark Gazette had a classic front page panic headline last summer:
"WOMAN FINDS FLATWORM IN LANARK GARDEN." This year it should read "DIFFERENT WOMAN FINDS FLATWORM IN NEWBIGGING GARDEN", and there it was, hiding under a log in my wood pile the other evening, about 5cm long and 2cm wide, like a fat, flat sliver of pinky brown lamb's liver. New Zealand Flatworms have the ability to wreak complete havoc with our local ecology (they destroy our native earth worms, the birds go hungry and die etc.) and how they've got here all the way from Down Under is a bit of a mystery. No-one's exactly sure how many species of New Zealand Flatworm there are either - I met some Flatworm enthusiasts from the Faro Islands at Dawyck Botanic Garden last summer, keen to discover if their version of the nasty little alien differed from ours.
According to David Knott, Curator at Dawyck, the agricultural area around Biggar was the first place in Scotland where New Zealand Flatworms were found in significant numbers, and although the fuss surrounding their initial appearance in the UK has died down a bit, research is still continuing in Dundee. They're regarded as an "introduced exotic species" says David, and until their biology is understood completely, there should still be concern. Which means, basically, that if you find a Flatworm, kill it. At the risk of upsetting the squeamish, the most effective way is to chop them up into little pieces with a trowel edge or sharp stone. First find your Flatworm, of course, and they're most likely to be hiding in dark dank corners, e.g. under flowerpots or large stones. If you're really keen to do your bit for the planet, why not set a Flatworm trap? Stretch a black bin bag across a damp and shady patch of earth, weight down with stones, and lift daily to check, trowel at the ready. A very effective method, I understand. Which makes me feel all the more guilty because that headline should read "DIFFERENT WOMAN FINDS FLATWORM IN NEWBIGGING GARDEN AND LETS IT ESCAPE." Oh yes, I did. And I've been rummaging around looking under flowerpots ever since. . . . . .

Morna Munro

ENGAGEMENT

Congratulations to Charlotte MacNish Porter of Harecairns and Ben Rainger on the announcement of their engagement.

ADVERTISING

The Bugle is published four times a year and distributed by hand to 370
homes in the Black Mount area. Advertising space is available to help offset our production costs and local businesses and private individuals are welcome to take advantage of this service. Rates for up to half a page A5 are £5 per insertion for businesses and £1 for private ads.

Please send ready-prepared artwork along with payment to Liz Gilfoyle at 3 Oxengate Farm Cottages, Elsrickle ML12 6QZ. Cheques should be made payable to Black Mount Community Council. If you need advice on
advertisement sizes etc. you can contact Liz on 01899 810373 or e-mail her at Liz.Gilfoyle@btinternet.com

Dates for your diary

Every Monday, except School Holidays Black Mount Lunch Club Elsrickle Hall 12 Noon
AlternateWednesdays Black Mount Church Coffee Morning Dolphinton 10.30am
20 May Black Mount Luncheon Club Plant Sale Elsrickle 10.00am
26 May BMCC Sports Night Dolphinton
29 May Black Mount Luncheon Club Holy Island Elsrickle
2 June THE GUILD SUMMER RALLY DOUGLAS 7.30pm
5 June BLACK MOUNT COMMUNITY COUNCIL MEETING ELSRICKLE HALL 7.30pm
3 July BLACK MOUNT COMMUNITY COUNCIL MEETING ELSRICKLE HALL 7.30pm
July Annual Duck Race Dunsyre 6.30pm
22 July BIGGAR FARMERS CLUB ANNUAL SHOW BIGGAR
19 August DOLPHINTON FLOWER SHOW DOLPHINTON 2.30pm
26 August Elsrickle WRI Open Flower Show Elsrickle Hall 2.30pm

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