HAVE you seen the upside down trees yet?

London-based artist Giles Kent says he is very pleased with his controversial £7,000 public artwork on the Halton to Caton cyclepath.

But the opinions of local residents and cycle path users have ranged from "rubbish" and "a waste of money" to the unprintable.

In fact, The Citizen has been unable to find a single local person willing to speak in favour of the art work.

Mr Kent was on site for two days planting nine larch trees upside down so the roots were exposed.

He told The Citizen: "I'm very pleased with it. It needs to weather and when the exposed bits of wood on the trunk go grey it will look quite interesting. I was only there two days but a lot of people stopped and said they were looking forward to seeing it finished. There were a few angry people and one just gave me a dirty look and said I should see a psychiatrist.

"I think most people will come round to liking it once it has weathered. May I say, I think the lights along the cycle path are a bad idea." We stopped a number of passers by this week and asked for their views.

Brian Rigby of Halton said: "It's just plain silly. It's a right mess. This so-called artist got the idea off the telly."

Pennie Jelliff of Lancaster, who was walking her dog said: "I thought it might be provocative or something but it just looked sad. There is no artistic merit in it whatsoever. In fact, looking at what they've done to this once lovely walk is heartbreaking."

Another dog walker scowled at our reporter and growled sarcastically: "It's worth every penny isn't it!"

HALTON residents hoping to stop the "urbanisation" of the Lancaster to Caton cyclepath were dismayed this week when a proposal to stop the path being lit with streelights was rejected.

What's more, protesters were aghast when Caton councillor Pat Quinton told the committee meeting: "I was elected on a Lib Dem ticket - not to represent local people."

Local residents have collected more than 1,000 names on a petition calling for lighting plans to be scrapped.

But city councillors heard that the scheme was already too advanced to be stopped.