I’M not a fan of coach travel. School outings always used to make me feel queasy.

However, one trip I wouldn’t miss for the world is the one setting off for County Hall on Wednesday morning.

I do urge you to hop aboard, too.

It’s free, and it’s been organised by campaigners fighting to protect our historic airfield from its owners, who regard this conservation area as the perfect spot to plonk 462 new homes.

Now heaven knows I don’t always see eye to eye with Wiltshire planners, but on this one I salute them.

They’ve faced personal criticism and public insults from the would-be developers, who claim they’ve needed to “educate” them in “the details of this somewhat more complex application than they are used to evaluating”.

That’s along with threats to increase flying noise to levels guaranteed to make everyone’s lives a misery.

Yet they have come up with a balanced, objective report. They’ve weighed up which of the many objections to this greedy scheme can and can’t be used as legally valid reasons for refusing it.

And their verdict? “It is not a sustainable development.”

There are many reasons why I share this view, and I’ve bored you with them too many times before.

Suffice it to say I don’t believe that flying from this unique wartime airstrip will survive once it’s hemmed in on all sides by people who just want a house and a quiet Sunday siesta.

It’s not even as if any of these are going to be ‘affordable’ homes.

If you do want to learn more, go to wiltshire.gov.uk and check out the officers’ report on the strategic planning committee’s agenda for the 31st, though I’ll be kind and give you a time-saving tip – the last four pages provide a useful summary.

The committee will have to decide whether to support this report’s conclusions at an appeal in front of a government inspector, or to roll over and surrender to the bulldozer brigade.

Once again, I have to take issue with Wiltshire’s top brass for holding such a vital discussion in Trowbridge, miles away across the Plain.

Especially in the middle of the working day.

It looks very much as if they don’t want local people prolonging the proceedings with their pesky opinions.

Whether they like me saying it or not, they are disenfranchising people in the south of the county by effectively preventing them from attending public debates on vital matters of local interest.

Which is why it’s crucial that anyone with time to spare in the middle of the day hops aboard that bus.

It’s picking up passengers in Manor Farm Road, off Green Lane in Ford, at 9am and outside Westover Land Rover at Old Sarum at 9.15.

And as I said, it won’t cost you a penny.

anneriddle36@gmail.com