ONCE again we Amesbury residents read in your paper about the Stonehenge bypass solutions – and again grand plans for a tunnel are being suggested.

No one can deny the area around Stonehenge is of special interest, but so are the needs of the local residents.

We do exist, and we do get fed up with the traffic at weekends – the local villages are jammed with lorries and cars trying to get past the jam. If one was to Google Earth the area, sitting at home in a warm room, it would not take too long to see that a perfectly viable route is already waiting for a southern bypass.

This would fit nicely onto the western end of the Amesbury bypass by the Stonehenge cottages, only crossing two roads – the A360 south of the Longbarrow roundabout and the B3083 between Berwick St James and of course Winterbourne Stoke.

It would follow the natural valley for the six miles (the shortest feasible route) from east to west at sea level of only 75 metres, some 30 metres below Stonehenge, thus hiding the monument from this new road – another problem solved.

Google Earth tells me the average width of dual carriageway at Amesbury is only 42 metres bank to bank.

The actual road is only 20 metres wide – this would fit between any barrows nicely on my proposed southern route.

This bypass would be built entirely separately from the existing A303, allowing the traffic to flow unhindered rather than lots of hold-ups with a tunnel that would be built on same line of the A303.

There – that didn’t cost much did it?

Half an hour sitting at the PC with Goggle Earth and it’s done.

But I don’t have a beard, rucksack and sandals, I’m just a commonsense Wiltshire moonraker with a computer that left school at 14. But most importantly, I live here.

Tony Bull

London Road

Amesbury