Biker to ask inquiry to lift ban

BIKERS and motorists wanting to use a shortcut to and from Felixstowe port are trying to persuade a public inquiry to lift the ban.

Strenuous efforts have been made in recent years to stop vehicles going up and down Peewit Hill because of the damage to the ancient lane and the noise and disturbance caused to residents.

Bollards were placed at the top to stop four-wheel drive vehicles, which woke up families at all hours revving their engines in low gear to ride the hill.

After six years' of research, council officials agreed that walkers could use the path up Peewit Hill – even though pedestrians had been doing so for 200 years.

But the decision to make the footpath, used daily by dozens of dockers to get between Dock Gate One and Grange Road, official means meant a public inquiry had to be called.

The inquiry opened yesterday at the committee room at County Hall, Ipswich.

It is expected that a number of people who have used the route in cars in the past, and on motorcycles, will attend to claim a right of way.

The rugged path on Peewit Hill has been used by thousands of people over the centuries but no one has ever really been sure who owned it or if they had the right to walk it.

County officials found the route first marked on a map of 1783 but it did not appear consistently on all maps after that date.

People who have used the path regularly though have provided written statements which prove it has been used mostly on foot but also on horse, bicycle and motorbike for the past 79 years.

Felixstowe Town Council owns a large part of the hill and is co-ordinating a project to turn it into a nature reserve with full public access, but it cannot progress the scheme further until the right of way issue is resolved.