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Birch Drive, BOURNEMOUTH, BH8 0LR

Townsend is a substantial 70s council estate in north Bournemouth. This, Tyrrell Gardens, is typical of the side streets off Jewell Road, the horseshoe-shaped main road through the estate.

Controversially, Bournemouth Borough Council voted, on 3 June 2008, to close Townsend Primary & Nursery School at the end of this term. The decision followed years of underachievement, inadequacy cited in Ofsted reports, and falling rolls. However, the week before the school had come out of "Special Measures" by Ofsted, suggesting that improvement had started to surface. As well as the educational implications, people on the estate are worried about whether the site, once the school has closed, will retain a community function or if it will be sold off.

Detail of the postbox outside Image, which replaced an earlier, single-aperture box which has a letter-bomb posted into it during one of the more troubled episodes of the Townsend estate. Townsend has always had a bad reputation but I don't believe it's as bad as all that – it's never going to be the most sought-after place but, I expect, if you wanted a proper sense of 'community', few suburbs of Bournemouth would match it.

The shop, incorporating post office, at Townsend is right in the centre of this community, alongside Image Townsend has long had a rough reputation, with bus company bosses withdrawing services through the estate in the evenings, and a letter bomb being posted in the postbox threatening postal services. However, reputations lasts longer than they deserve and Townsend has a thriving community centre and has had postal and bus services restored. The new postbox is a double-aperture one, which looks quite out of place here (see Image).

This small residential road is just opposite Townsend School and on the opposite side of Jewell Road. The houses are modest terraced houses with small gardens.

A public right of way, footpath K47, heads from Ibbertson Road to cut across the broad triangular grass area and meet Throop Road here. The course of the right of way appears to be mapped dead-straight, undefined across the grass to go through the car park on our right - see Image for a view illustrating this. However, the only available route is to come along this paved path onto the open space, and then veer off it alongside the car park railings. See Image for the next view on the route behind us, and Image for the view towards us from Throop Road ahead.

This public footpath, nowadays marked out as a shared foot/cycle route, runs for 500m or so alongside the main A338 and is essentially a replacement for this segment of Holdenhurst Road, which was lost to make way for the dual carriageway. Holdenhurst Road is still one of the town's main routes but no longer reaches Holdenhurst village as it originally did. Here, the camera is positioned low to the ground as we look along the white line separating the intended cycle and walking halves of the paved path. See Image for the next view on the path ahead, and Image for the next view behind us - each with links to further photos along the route.

A public right of way, footpath K47, heads from Ibbertson Road to cut across the broad triangular grass area and meet Throop Road here. The course of the right of way appears to be mapped dead-straight, undefined across the grass to go through the car park directly ahead - see Image for a view illustrating this. However, the only available route is to come along the paved path onto the open space, and then veer off left alongside the car park railings. See Image for the view towards us from the path ahead, with links to further photos on the route.

This shop/post office is found between Strouden and Holdenhurst.

This public footpath, nowadays marked out as a shared foot/cycle route, runs for 500m or so alongside the main A338 and is essentially a replacement for this segment of Holdenhurst Road, which was lost to make way for the dual carriageway. Holdenhurst Road is still one of the town's main routes but no longer reaches Holdenhurst village as it originally did. Here, we look across the path from a steep bank separating it from a public green space. The view extends across the A338 Spur Road at the point where a slip road joins the main carriageway (see the thick white markings at the extreme right-hand edge of the picture). See Image for the next view on the path to the left, and Image for the next view to the right - each with links to further photos along the route.