The idea of doing away with the Cobb Gate parking circle had been floated before I thought of it, though as far as I know the only suggestion for taking its place was a turning-circle for buses. My proposal is a garden.

There would still be room for a roadway (perhaps of limited access) leading to the Marine Parade. A new and better bus shelter (the old one got demolished by a runaway car in September 2004) could open at its rear into an even more pleasant structure, a Mirador. (That's my provisional name for it, like the Miradors or terraces with coffee tables that look down over the old quarter of Lisbon.) The Mirador would be like a balcony, at least partly roofed against rain, with benches, where people can sit to enjoy their ice creams and look down over the garden and the sea.

There is, without this, no rest at the focus of Lyme. The visitors who get off the coaches must walk, lean on railings, or at best sit on two diminutive hexagonal benches around posts in the middle of the crowd. There is no inviting point toward which they can gravitate, where they can sit, take it easy, look around, and appreciate the town and its setting.

The Mirador terrace, being on a level with the pathway below Bell Cliff, would be essentially a part of the pedestrian way that includes the Marine Parade on one side and the Gun Cliff sea walls on the other.

The Mirador part of this plan would replace only four parking spaces. It could be constructed immediately, without waiting for the larger element, the garden.

Digression into the argumentation, for those with a taste for local controversies:

Related proposals were to replace the bus shelter with a larger more attractive one, set it back more so that the street would be wider and buses could turn there, and block off this space and Bridge Street with "rising bollards" so that only buses would be able to enter, everything else coming into Lyme the other way.

Fifty percent of citizens asked in a poll were in favour of removing the Cobb Gate car park. But adjacent shopkeepers, fearing that some customers accustomed to parking within a few feet of them would not be able to do so, put on their counters petitions against any change of use, and persuaded hundreds of visitors to sign. They had been told of only one alternative: making the space into a turning-circle for buses. Meanwhile there was, immediately behind the adjacent shops, a much larger car park—forty-four spaces, of which the eleven nearest to the entrance were usually empty but annoying unusable, because "reserved".

Objection has been made that we can't have a garden here because of salty spray from the sea. But there are salt-tolerant plants—pines, tamarisks, gray poplars, sea buckthorn, rugosa rose (which is found wild in the Undercliff)—and indeed a large book called "Gardens by the Sea" is available in the Broad Street bookshops. Lyme could boast of having a demonstration salt-tolerant garden.

Another objection is that the parking fees represent more income than the town council would care to lose. Very well, another proposal: let's at least on one day a week have a street market here, such as Lyme once did (the town still has a charter for it). It should be on, say, Monday, so as not to conflict with the vibrant markets in Bridport on Wednesday and Saturday and Axminster every Thursday. I guess my garden idea would then be reduced to the strip where at present ==seven cars park in the lee of the front sea wall.