Celebs team up to save beauty spot
A STAR of Peaky Blinders and the hit comedy Detectorists is the latest in a line of famous faces to lend their support to the campaign against the proposed M4 relief road.
Newport actress Aimee-Ffion Edwards has joined Gwent Wildlife Trust’s fight against the Welsh Government’s mooted £1.4bn “Black Route”, which will see the construction of a new six-lane, 14-mile motorway through the Gwent Levels, an environmentally important area of ancient meadows and marshland.
Reciting the famous poem Leisure by revered local poet WH Davies – which goes “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare” – her words are set to footage of the 125-hectare area’s stunning scenery, home to a vast and varied amount of rare and endangered wildlife such as otters, water voles and cranes.
The short film – shot by GWT trustee and volunteer Rob Waller, filmmaker Neil Aldridge and recorded at the iconic Rockfield Studios in Monmouth – also shows how the landscape, with its hundreds of miles of waterways, is host to kingfishers, shrill carder bees and the king diving beetle.
Other celebrities who’ve lent their support to the #SaveTheGwentLevels campaign are former Sex Pistols punk legend John Lydon – himself a professed nature lover – Stereophoncs’ Kelly Jones, Dirty Sanchez’s Mat Pritchard and Lee Dainton, TV presenter Iolo Williams and even Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville.
Running from Magor to Castleton, going south of Newport, the route has been argued about, debated and discussed for more than 25 years.
It was first announced way back in 1991, but revived in 2006 as part of an effort to improve Wales’ transport infrastructure and provide a solution to the increasing daily congestion and amount of serious accidents on the M4.
Conservationists, however, argue that it will cause an environmental catastrophe and result in little more than a maximum of 11 minutes being shaved off the average commute by around 2050 - an estimate revealed by the Welsh Government itself during a yearlong public inquiry, which came to an end in March.
Alternative solutions also exist, including a “Blue Route” which would instead see a series of existing roads, including the A48 Newport Southern Distributor Road and the A4810 at Llanwern Steelworks, upgraded and earmarked for additional traffic.
Nevertheless, the final decision on whether the relief road goes ahead, along with its location, looks like it won’t be made by the current First Minister, Carwyn Jones. The Bridgend AM, has admitted the final say-so will likely fall to his successor in early 2019.