Notice: The Great Big Green Week And Car Free Day Returns

Published on: 19 Sep, 2022
Updated on: 19 Sep, 2022

The Great Big Green Week is back again in Guildford (Saturday, September 24 to Sunday, October 2) together with the second popular car free day on Sunday, September 25.

In 2021 on car free day, the upper High Street was busy with stalls, shoppers and those just happy to walk around.

Celebrated throughout the UK, there is plenty to do for all the family in Guildford’s Great Big Green Week including:

activities (circus skills, nine metre climbing tower, Punch and Judy) and street play for children
live music from local groups
Ethical Vegan market
Rural Crafts market
Antiques and Brocante market
Farmers’ market
street food and drink stalls
e-bike and e-skateboard demos
information about how residents can step up their actions to tackle climate change

Our town is usually dominated by cars and lorries. On this one day in the year, people will be able to walk car-free streets putting “pedestrians first in the town centre” says a GBC press release.

Guildford Car Free Day map (courtesy Experience Guildford).

You can engage with your local community to tackle climate change in a week of events, talks and workshops, with Zero Carbon Guildford and partners including The Friary, Fully Charged e-bike shop and the University of Surrey.

Most activities are free but you may have to book for some of the talks or workshops in Zero Carbon Guildford.

Responses to Notice: The Great Big Green Week And Car Free Day Returns

Jim Allen Reply

September 20, 2022 at 12:52 pm

Consider this from this patient’s point of view…

There are no direct bus services from Burpham to:

Kingfisher Drive (local GP)
Fairlands (eye test)
Normandy (pain injections)
Haslemere (elbow replacement)
Royal Surrey County Hospital
St Lukes (physio)
The main railway station

In any case my nearest bus stop is 10 to 15 minutes walk away.

So according to the argument put forward in this article no one in Burpham can have medical treatment unless they are a keen walker or cyclist ie: physically fit.

It is seriously time for people to get real.

Overall, electric cars are more polluting than internal combustion vehicles. There is not, and never will be, enough electricity to charge every electric car without using carbon-based fuel to generate it or the lithium to make batteries.

Claiming active travel works fails to provide for the weekly shopping due to its weight. Car clubs only work for occasional journeys, not daily journeys.

Removing carbon from House paints quadruples the quantity of its replacement as the replacement fails in two years instead of lasting 10.

Building more houses needs more energy and water but the rainfall does match demand and the cost of cleaning dirty water has to be done with lots of energy!

Every single piece of clothing is carbon based be it the metal to make the machinery of the cotton gin or the fracking tower of the hydro carbon the polyester and nylon

Time to get real and stop buying new cars, keep the old one, stop finding ways to ‘campaign’ each journey is creating climate change and using energy unnecessarily road blockages cause increase pollution.

Look to the way you run you own life and you own home before trying to convince me I must live carbon free while you do nothing yourself!

Noting my home and way of life is doing more than most to leave something for those following on!
What ae you actually doing in a practical sense?
S Callanan Reply

September 21, 2022 at 1:59 pm

In the new Guildford Borough parking regime the discount for cars with engines smaller than 1200cc has vanished. That was a helpful encouragement to have a small, low-powered car.

Is there some very subtle point to this I’m too dim to see? Or, on the other hand, is it that Guildford Borough and Surrey County Council are once again grasping at every penny they can wring out of the car-owning population? Take a wild guess.