I HAD to go to Bournemouth which I try to avoid as much as possible.

I used to think that Boscombe was an awful place, looking rundown and people that you wouldn’t like to bump into on a dark night.

I have to say that the town centre lives up to this and more. It is dirty, completely rundown and no new business would be in their right mind to start up with the kind of people that I have seen just walking down Old Christchurch Road and then up to Commercial Road.

There was a fight taking place outside of the Yorkshire Building Society whilst I was at their counter and hearing raised voices.

I walked past the litter and the empty boarded-up shops including my beautiful old store Beales – where I worked. Man and boy and loved working there and the lovely customers we had who visited daily.

I was stopped several times by people begging for money and I felt very insecure.

The paved blocking laid in 1980 is dangerously uneven, no attractive planters just mossy green areas where they once were.

Westover Road is dreadful, once the most upmarket part of the town, I walked past the skateboarders in what was in the good old days, The Square. At least Bobby’s looks nice. There was a police panda car arresting someone just by the entrance of the now nearly empty arcade.

I visited Primark to buy some Disney clothes for my grandchildren, and as I was going up the escalator there was another fight going on with some aggressive guys on the ground floor.

All of this in just the space of an hour. It’s just a miserable place to go to now.

Having just visited France recently where everywhere is clean and tidy with trees and shrubs walkways kept perfect even on the motorways into Paris, attractive small shops and a sense of pride that they have, I can only say, shame on you BCP Council, you show absolutely no care whatsoever.

I paid my £6.50 car park fee at the Delkieth steps multi-storey car park and left feeling angry and upset just like I read in the Echo regularly by many local people and holiday visitors who will not be returning.

Stuart Prosser