New year-round attraction already bugging residents

Thursday 17 September 2015

The race is on to get planning permission for a new outdoor tourist attraction that will be open all year round in St John before the neighbours put the brakes on the whole idea.

Roger Le Maistre who runs Creepy Valley Adventure Centre is the driving force behind the proposed venture - a new off-road buggy track on land opposite the Moto X track at Sorel Point – which he hopes to open in May next year.

Mr Le Maistre has spent the last three years motoring on to find the right spot for the outdoor centre. He believes he’s finally on track to open a much-needed facility in a green zone on La Rue de Sorel and hopes to convince the neighbours of its value at a parish meeting at the site next weekend.

He said: “It’s filling a hole in the market that is really really needed. It’s very important that people understand that there is a need for Jersey tourist activities 12 months of the year. There’s no driving provision for tourists.”

"We haven’t gone into this lightly – we’re not going to spoil anybody’s view, anybody’s life, anybody’s peace – it really is going to be for everyone to enjoy.

 “We’re not ruining the countryside, visually you are not going to see it, there will be absolutely no nuisance at all, once you’ve walked past it, you won’t even hear it."

But he'll have a job convincing some residents living nearby including Muriel Holmes who thinks the new centre will be an "eyesore" for an area of the Island she and many others consider a "beauty spot".

She said: "It's just outrageous! What's the point of the Environment department beautifying the north coast and the Tourism department destroying it. The right hand doesn’t seem to know what the left hand is doing.

"It's nonsense that it won't have an impact. It will disfigure the landscape. There will be noise and where are they going to park their cars? There's a very limited space there - where are the cars going to be parked?

"Jersey is so small, we haven’t got the land for this sort of thing, we need it for farming, we need it for housing.

"It's a crazy scheme - riding on lawnmowers up and down!"

If approved Off Road Adventures Jersey will open from 9 until 4 in the winter and from 9 until 7 during the summer months. It will have two tracks, one for adults and one for children with four buggies racing round each track at a time.

Mr Le Maistre said: “We knew that we were going to have some objections no matter where we put it but I think what people are not understanding – they are not racing buggies, they are leisure buggies – there is a massive difference.”

“The buggies themselves – we’ve gone with super silent Honda four stroke engines that are used in many industry-led things so they have to be very, very quiet.

"Not only is it quite remote but because of the topography of the fields – it’s relatively flat. When we looked at the fields, it’s close to parking, access to the main road and in an area that is already synonymous with motor sport.”

Mr Le Maistre plans to put up two portacabins – an office and a briefing area, two containers to store the buggies and a portaloo but says his new venture won’t have any visual impact at all.

“We’re not actually building anything. The track itself is marked out by tyres, we’re sewing the whole field with grass and hope to even get some cuts of hay off it as well.

“The whole area is grass, except for a two metre perimeter we’ll use as a conservation corridor around the whole area. These fields have been used for agriculture but there is no intrinsic ecological value of the fields themselves. The grower has sewed barley this year but there’s nothing in there at the moment and won’t be anything in there this year, it’s absolutely flat.”

Mr Le Maistre hopes people will come along to meet him and find out more at his plans at the parish meeting at the site on La Rue de Sorel on Saturday 26 September.