RECENTLY, one of your readers asked (Letters, March 15) what had happened to the lovely moorland road that wandered through the rambling village of Tockholes and offered travellers one of the grandest views in Lancashire.

I am not surprised the misguided people behind the 'traffic calming scheme' that now disfigures our village have so far failed to defend their work.

They have just spent £60,000 of public money, plonking speed bumps and concrete chicanes on a country road where accidents were rare and dangerous speeding was nearly impossible.

They have left a winding Pennine lane looking like a back-street rat run and when you drive into the village by night, under the dazzling lights at the chicane barriers, you feel you have arrived at one of the old Iron Curtain border posts in East Germany.

It has all been unnecessary. There has not been a fatal accident on this road for over 30 years and so few accidents of any kind that it has failed to qualify for a speed camera.

As recently as 1997, Tockholes was saved from a misguided house-building scheme after protesters reminded planners that Lancashire County Council classed it as an area of special character as long ago as 1973. Now, the village has been urbanised with the tons of street furniture need for marking multiple chicanes and a truly-amazing double set of speed limits.

When I wrote a letter to the designer of this scheme, I failed to get a reply.

More alarmingly, one of the men building the obstacles told me: "I know how you feel -- the man does not answer my phone calls either."

Can someone ask Capita PLC to take it all away and give us back our moorland village?

ANDREW ROSTHORN, Ivy Cottages, Tockholes.