Sir – I expected some adverse comment on my letter (Gazette, July 17) but I did not expect to escape so lightly (Gazette, July 31).

Mr Wilcock clearly has not read my letter properly and drifts off into some bucolic fantasy world of his own, seemingly in reaction to my name and the perceptions he takes from it.

Perhaps he should be offered the opportunity to re-read my letter and then re-write his own.

David Condon, on the other hand, seems to be writing a memorandum to bureaucrats, rather than expressing an opinion to a newspaper.

I doubt whether many will read very much of it but it does show why, over the decades, CPRE has tended to do more harm than good.

For the purposes of assessing what joining the A40 will be like, it is perfectly reasonable to use the crossover.

That is a long way from advocating regular use and the occasional vehicle is not going to be problematic.

Nothing else is available to make any assessment possible and it requires empathy rather than science.

This is not something that can be reproduced in a laboratory with conditions controlled and variables eliminated.

The primary issue which I raised is whether new slipways at Shores Green will take a sufficient proportion of the traffic away from Bridge Street and the town centre. I think it is unlikely because, for many people, merging with the very fast A40 traffic will be a daunting experience they will avoid.

Both correspondents miss this point – or carefully avoid it.

Never mind what the inspector says, it is the feelings of the drivers who are expected to use it that count. On that, it will succeed or fail.

Ralph Ingham-Johnson, Pensclose, Witney