West Berkshire Parks some of the Best in the Country Options

[Simon Kirby]

It's official, West Berkshire has some of the best parks in the country. These are the parks awarded the prestigious Green Flag Awards:

• Northcroft and Goldwell Park, Newbury
• Linear Park, Calcot

No award for Newbury's Jewel in the Crown then, our nugget of purest green?

It's creditable that Northcroft and Goldwell retained the award (I'm right in thinking I've seen the flag there in previous years aren't I), but to me a great park needs to have, in addition to playing fields and pitches, extensive formal garden and planting with a tea shop and really well maintained public toilets and a number of other attractions too such as a boating lake, museum, a maze, outdoor chess, bowls - stuff like that, and it all needs to be contained by a good fence so dogs can't run out. I don't doubt that the award criteria are laudable, and I absolutely applaud the requirement to have community involvement, but I don't necessarily agree that the Green Flag is the mark of a great park, it's more the mark of a well-managed park.

Incidentally, there are allotment sites that have won the Green Flag Award, and that really is a creditable endorsement of the site's management, including as it does the community involvement and free and welcome access to the community at large - I've always felt that allotment sites should be open to the public and that visitors should be encouraged, because they are great places to sit or stroll as you ponder.

[blackdog]

I don't necessarily agree that the Green Flag is the mark of a great park, it's more the mark of a well-managed park.

Seems about right to me. Northcroft/Goldwell is a pleasant green space, but not a lot else.