A SMALL group of residents responded to a call to publicly demonstrate support for efforts to reopen a West Somerset coastal road by attending a rally on Wednesday (August 26).

About 40 people gathered on Cleeve Hill, Watchet, where the B3191 to Blue Anchor and Carhampton was closed three-and-a-half years ago due to coastal cliff erosion.

Somerset Council recently applied for £41 million Government funding to divert the road inland to allow it to be re-opened.

A decision will be taken in October, and Wednesday’s rally was intended by local MP Rachel Gilmour to show the Government the strength of local feeling, although she was unable to attend.

Somerset Cllr Cara Strom told the gathering: “Everybody loves visiting Watchet, it does not matter if you are staying in Blue Anchor, Carhampton, or wherever.

“This is such an easy route to come down, some people now just are not coming because it is such a long way around.

“We really do need this bid to be successful.”

Watchet Mayor Cllr Loretta Whetlor said the closure had caused ‘devastation’, and a successful bid would create ‘elation’.

Cllr Whetlor said: “We want a road so people can get off the bus or out of their cars, come into town, and bring us back to life.”

Watchet Chamber of Trade chairman and town Cllr John Richards said: “Before the closure, you would not have been able to stand anywhere in the town centre.

“Now, I can stop for 10 minutes and chat in the middle of the highway, it is that quiet.

“Passing traffic just cannot get here.”

Somerset Cllr Mandy Chilcott, from Minehead, said: “We are dependent on tourism, we need our visitors.

“We are dependent on people being able to get around, we have no bus service serving many of these communities.

“The closure has severed our community in half.”