IT’S difficult to believe that the beautiful rural area we live in is being turned into a repository for garbage thrown out of vehicles.

Whether you travel on a main road or a single carriageway, winding around and through the villages, the grass verges and hedge bottoms are littered with drinks cans, plastic food wrappers, and empty cardboard containers. Most is the rubbish from eating and drinking on the hoof.

Travelling on the road from Wetwang to Malton enjoying the wonderful Wolds views my pleasure was constantly distracted by cans glinting in the sun and other

rubbish.

All that I thought about was how have we become such a filthy uncaring country; that was until further along the road I noticed bulging sacks piled in twos and threes, and then a wonderful sight just before North Grimston - a team of men and women picking up the rubbish, and filling the sacks ready to be removed.

It seemed inadequate to simply wave and give a thumbs up sign, these were people who had given up their time on a Sunday to clear up a lovely country road, and they should be acknowledged for their hard work caused by uneducated unthinking travellers.

It’s time that there was a way to enforce the law, by taking details of cars and bike riders we see throwing out rubbish and report them.

It might help if children were taught in schools about the danger to wildlife of the rubbish, not to mention the eyesore it creates.

But best of all the education should start with their parents, who should insist that even toffee papers should be put in a pocket and taken home.

Well done to the B1248 clear up team. Perhaps the Gazette & Herald should do a feature on them, I’m sure they’ve a story to tell about the stuff they have picked up.

Jill Hopkins, Great Barugh

We need to invest

RIDICULOUS, short-sighted idealist claptrap.

Our region needs transport links. Our region is isolated by the lack of primary arterial roads to take traffic past York to the coast.

We see standing traffic every holiday season, we know the delays, and back road shortcuts required to commute 20 miles in under an hour, or risk up to two hours crawling in the A64 jam.

Being anti-roads and anti-car without offering better solutions is middle class privilege gone mad.

Let’s invest in public transport links, to get people out of cars. Let’s decarbonise transport, by using EVs and low carbon charging. Let’s built the long overdue bike lanes at the same time.

Let’s makes sure the essential A64 upgrade is as environmentally conscious as possible.

But opposing it for self-serving ideals represents no local interests, serves no representation, and risks delaying or undermining a project we must embrace and make work, make our region accessible for trade, tourism, industry, farming and residents alike.

More importantly, we need environmentalism to drop the NIMBYism and get some economic and social good sense, some pragmatism, some solutions, some grown-up ideas.

Will the Greens now oppose every project on vague environmental grounds, calling for ideological revolution, without offering full and balanced project reviews or provision replacement for our neglected infrastructure needs, like this, just for political point scoring #wecandobetter

Bring on low carbon transport. Bring on a greener Ryedale, while making our economy, connectivity and regional representation stronger.

Derek Chapman, Kirkbymoorside