Opinion : A big improvement to Pauls Row

At lunchtime today yours truly decided to tootle over to Pauls Row to cast my eye over the area following the completion of the improvement works in the area.

I must say that the Pauls Row area looks impressive now. The old road and pavement has gone and the pedestrian has priority over the motorist.

A thick blue line on the ground even marks the spot where the River Wye once flowed. Sadly the river is still banished underground which is a real pity.

Regular readers will know that yours truly is not a great fan of the pedestrianisation of our town centre indeed the day traffic stopped flowing freely down Wycombe High Street was, in my opinion, the day the rot started to set in.

However Pauls Row is a different case, there is no real destination for traffic to go and therefore the few vehicles that did venture around that part of town were a hindrance to the pedestrians who had to walk on narrow pavements on either side of the road.

The beige pavement surface now gracing Pauls Row with inlaid stone pattern looks far better than the cobbles, atlas balls and bland paving stones used in previous pedestrianisation schemes around the town centre.

It will be interesting to see what the area looks like once a few roadworks have taken place there, I do hope patches of black asphalt don’t start appearing amongst the beige carpet.

While it’s always welcome to see improvement works being carried out in the town we must take into account that Pauls Row is not the busiest area in Wycombe and just a short distance away poor old Frogmoor is still festering away with no sign of improvement.

Surely Frogmoor, lined with so so many businesses so desperately needing trade, should have received a makeover before Pauls Row?

Of course anyone who tackles Frogmoor will probably have to bow to public pressure and install some sort of water feature there and we all know how troublesome that have been over the years.

What do you think?

*My next blog will be published on Friday evening around 8pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.