New Worcester Trails

I am really excited to be able to report that we have two new Worcester Trails to offer when we are at the Worcester Victorian Fair at the beginning of December!

Both have been written by David (who also wrote the two 'old' Worcester Trails), so we can be sure they complement each other beautifully. The first 'new' one is Worcester's Trail of 2 Bridges - a great name I think as it describes the Trail very well - it starts at the Sabrina Bridge end of Worcester's Severn and is a walking or cycling Trail. We have, for some time, been wanted to write a Trail that was off road and suitable for cycling and this one ticks that box! The Trail crosses over to the non-city side of Worcester and heads along the Severn, past Cripplegate Park. The park is delightful and has so much going on in it. Whenever I go past it I have fond memories of our very first fair - it was a summer flower fair and we sold all of 10 Trails and were very excited by the whole experience!

Crossing over the road and heading on past the cricket ground, you really feel you are out in the countryside and away from the bright lights of the city! The Trail heads to the new Diglis bridge and crossing over the bridge you are on the return journey, past the Diglis basin and loch! The development around there really is worth a view and some of the properties that have been built appear very desirable! Heading back along the river, there are all sorts of interesting things to see including how high the flooding has been in the past and I suspect that at certain times of the year, Trailers will need to check the height of the river before they attempt this Trail!

The Trail finishes back at Sabrina Bridge and will take around an hour and a half if walked at a reasonably relaxed pace!

The second new Trail is 'Worcester in Pictures'. This Trail has been written with the younger members of the family in mind and is entirely around the pedestrian parts of Worcester. It starts at the open market just outside the Crown Gate shopping centre and every clue has a photo attached to it. This means that younger Trailers can be shown the picture and can then look out for it as they walk around - we have had feedback from several customers that the children really like the hide and seek element of our Trails so this is a wonderful addition to the Worcestershire catalogue. It should also take around an hour and a half and perhaps can be done by Dad with the kids whilst Mum shops!! Just an idea :). Suffice to say that although we haven't quite finished testing it, we are looking forward to having it on the stall at the various Christmas markets we will be at this December.

Aberaeron

Doing a Treasure Trail in someone else’s patch is always very interesting and doing the Aberaeron Lost Treasure Hunt was no different to our experiences elsewhere! We were staying in a self catering place, right on the harbour and the route of the Treasure Trail went right past the house, so we decided not to start at the beginning but to pick up the route at Clue 5! I wonder if we’ve publicised enough that it really doesn’t matter where you start on a Trail when they are circular and you don’t need to know what has gone before to work out what is next.

We set off then towards the sea front, only distracted briefly by the clues and plaques that we passed before we found ourselves on the coastal path. Coastal paths are often very challenging, but this bit of it was flat and along the shore line which was a good thing for my recovering knee (had an op on it a couple of months ago). We were then directed up through fields and back down again into the main part of town. As we walked around we learnt much about the town which is Georgian and very beautiful even in November with the houses painted lovely pastel shades and in fantastic knick considering they are by the sea.

I hadn’t realised that Aberaeron was one of Dylan Thomas’s haunts and was also intrigued to find a plaque on a bridge which was built by one of my old employers, no longer in existence as the company was acquired by Tarmac way back in the late 70s!

We did think we might try out the Aberystwyth Trail as well, but as the Tourist Information Centre had sold out of them, we didn’t manage to get hold of one.....but we plan to go back in September or October next year and will be more organised with a stock of Trails ready! They really do make sure you see the best bits of a town and of course give the walk a purpose!

The weather deteriorated as the week went on, but the sunsets were gorgeous and the restaurants either side of us served heavenly food, so all in all we had a great time!

Winner of the Bewdley Maths Trail

The summer has flown by and it was time this week to do the draw for the winner of the Bewdley Maths Trail ..... which was duly done and the winner was sent an email with the good news. 4 days later we haven't heard back from them but I will give it another day or two before I try phoning. I must admit I do worry that emails might go into people's junk mail and they don't know about the news, but on the other hand sending a quick email is so much faster than tracking down people by phone! Perhaps I should compromise a send a text if they have supplied a mobile phone number. What do you think? How do you like to receive information about say a win - email, text or phone?

Anyway, back to the topic! Bewdley is a beautiful little town which like Pershore, tries hard to market itself to tourists and it has a lot going for it. Our Bewdley Trail starts in the long term car park by the river. We are going to revamp the Trail now that the Maths Trail has expired but I think we will stick with the start point as it is so convenient. We will take in the new Jubilee Gardens which our current Trail misses out and update the clues a little now we are so much more experienced at clue writing. We don't want to change the essence of it though as we have had some of our best comments about the Bewdley Spy Mission - there is a selection below:

This year Linda from West Midlands commented "Excellent" ; Emma from Tenbury Wells said "It was great" ; Rosemary from Kidderminster told us "Did it with our walking group on a very wet February Sunday - it was great fun, we all enjoyed it".

So, if you are stuck for something to do on a wet Sunday - hot foot it to Bewdley and have a go!

August

I can't quite believe how long it is since I updated this Blog *note to self, must try harder!

Anyway, I thought I'd have a brief think about what Treasure Trails H&W did in August and share it with you dear reader.

You already know that we had a stand at the Herefordshire Country Fair at the beginning of the month but you may not know that we ended the month with a stand at the Pershore Plum Festival. This particular day out has always been a favourite of ours as Pershore itself is a lovely little town and we have a Trail that explores lots of it. We also wrote a special Plum Trail three years ago now which we thoroughly enjoyed writing and was all in verse. The Trail we have there starts at the picnic spot by the bridges just out of town and heads into town, around the Abbey and back again with one of the clues close by where we always have our stall. The feedback is always positive about Pershore, with one customer from Stourport when asked the question - how can we improve your experience saying "nothing really, found it really enjoyable".

August sales were up on the same period last year and up on July with lots and lots of you out and about exploring and we are always really pleased when people make the effort to submit their answers and give us their feedback. The best feedback received in August was from a customer living in Worcester who said "Could do with a few longer trails that can occupy a whole day".

We had a lovely article submitted by a regular Trailer about her experiences around Kidderminster which we sent off to the Kidderminster Shuttle. I spoke to them about printing it and they said they would try to if they had some space, but we don't think they managed it, so I will reprint it in the next blog post.

The lovely Christine Hope from Hopes of Longtown took a big order of Trails from us as she was advertising them in the Hereford Times during August and we were delighted to supply not only her but the Hereford, Ross-on-Wye and Leominster Tourist Information Centres all restocked as well.

We created a super personalised Trail for a hen with a very exotic job over in Bangladesh working with tigers... and she and her friends chose to spend their hen weekend in the Wye Valley which was just great. On the day they did the Trail the sun shone and we hope to get some photos and a quote or two from them soon. We also took a firm booking for a hen party next year - talk about planning in plenty of time!

Scarily one of our fellow licensees decided to do our Ledbury Murder Mystery - they had family working at Eastnor Castle for the Big Chill which was why they were in our area.... they are biased, but their comment was "We had a great afternoon in Ledbury, once again proving that Treasure Trails work for all ages as we discovered far more than we would have done trawling around the shops and cafes". They sent us a great photo for the album!

And last, but not least we experimented with using Google Ads to drive people to our website. Not entirely certain how successful the campaign was, but we will do another one in the run up to Christmas!

Herefordshire Country Fair

Its a momentous day in the life of Treasure Trails Herefordshire & Worcestershire - the lovely David (@TreasureTrailsH to his followers) has gone off to the Hereford Country Fair today to set up and man the Treasure Trails stall and I would normally have said "on his own" as I can't go with him. However, he did enlist the help of his brother in law and the two of them are off on a great start with an order for a personalised Hen Party Trail from one of the other stall holders before the show even started!!

So, the challenge is on to beat last year's total sales!!

Can I cheat?

I want to recreate the blog post that a Twitter friend wrote after he had tested our new Ludlow Trail...... here it is in its entirety. And if you want to read his other musings, then go find him on http://shropsdan.wordpress.com/

He said.....


Recently a chum of mine Birgit and I answered a call from Treasure Trails via twitter to trial a new treasure trail in Ludlow.

Having never really looked at a treasure trail or really heard of them before I was intrigued and curious about what it was that we had undertaken. Amanda at Treasure Trails emailed us our clue sheets and we were ready for our afternoon out. Our particular treasure trail was based around a murder and we were given a list of suspects and murder weapons and each clue helped eliminate either a suspect or weapon.

So Monday afternoon arrived and Birgit and I along with Watson her Labradoodle arranged to meet in front of the castle and off we set. We both are fairly local to Ludlow and some of the clues came easy to us, but there were some rather lateral clues that took some time to figure out. Upon solving each clue we would cheer each other and set off following out directions to the next clue location. We got to see some amazing places and buildings that usually you would never stop and look at nor take note of.

We also learnt about the history of the town and I will be boring my chums about the facts that I learnt whilst on my trail for some time. I would defiantly do another trail again and certainly buy the Ludlowtrail when it becomes live as presents for people.

Thank you Treasure Trails, for a wonderful afternoon, and for showing us around a town I thought I knew so well.

Walking for Health

I thought I'd try a different topic today - walking for health. What caught my eye was an article in the Western Telegraph. The article reminded people that they needed to wear the right footwear when walking on coastal paths.... and of course, it is true that you do need to wear the right shoes whenever you are out walking as tottering along in high heels on rough paths could end in disaster!

Although mainly town based, Treasure Trails have some more countrified walks and our Symonds Yat walk in particular would not be suitable for any old shoes and especially not with heels. The walk is on pavements, rough paths through woods, the suspension bridge, the hand ferry and back to pavements!

My favourite walking shoes are old now and I can't quite bring myself to replace them as they are so worn in they feel like slippers and I am sure that no new shoe would feel as good! But I am going to have to bite the bullet and get some more soon.

Treasure Trails visits the Hay Festival

We went to the Hay Festival as consumers/customers rather than exhibitors! The atmosphere was brilliant and we wandered around all the stands of which there aren't that many - I remember we enquired about having a stall in our first year of trading and were frightened off by the price. But I don't think the Hay Festival is right for us as individual Treasure Trails licensees to have a stall as so many people there are likely to be from far afield and wanting Trails for their home locations rather than Hay itself or the surrounding towns.

We had a local Shepherds icecream (toffee and vanilla for me, coffee and vanilla for David) and it was a luscious as ever. We visited the Oxfam shop and bought a map of the region - love maps - and when we walked some of Offa's Dyke last weekend, we had talked about buying one of those really detailed ones and there it was at Hay!

We had been invited to the Wiggly Wiggler's Garden Party for 6.30 where we were greeted warmly and offered cider, perry or apple juice and a sumptuous selection of canapes. We renewed acquaintance with Clare from Trumpers Teas and Sharon from Kinder Pocock and hobnobbed with Anne Robinson who'd come to plant some wild flowers in the Wiggly garden. The time flew by and we were then queueing up with 1,498 others to watch and listen to Anne interviewing Chris Evans. He was brilliant, he talked and talked and we most definitely got our money's worth. I was surprised that he is now 45 - no wonder he has matured!

Leaving Hay we picked up a very sweet hitchhiker and dropped her off in Leominster. Something we haven't done for years and years, but it was that kind of day! Never missing a chance to talk about Treasure Trails, she was very interested and we managed to divest ourselves of yet another leaflet!!

Now you can read about all the Worcestershire Trails in one go!

We've written a brief summary on all the Trails in the Worcestershire catalogue to make it easier to decide which one to do next! We know that lots of you are working your way through the catalogue!

www.treasuretrails.co.uk/worcestershire/TrailSummary.html

Facebook

Facebook is not as intuitive as Twitter, and we are still finding our feet with it business wise.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Treasure-Trails-Herefordshire-and-Worcestershire/162349793818592

Pleaes have a look and 'like' us (if you do!) and if you don't, please let us know why you don't...

Announcing Lots of New Trails

This is one for our regular Trailers - we have been busy in the first five months of this year writing new Trails for the catalogue and although three of them still need testing, two are up and running and out there for you to try!

Here's what we love about each of them and what we aren't so happy about :)

Kingsland Spy Mission
What we love about the Kingsland Trail is that it is written mostly in rhyme and although we are billing it as one of our easier Trails it still has all the elements of our normal Trails with clues written for all the family. What we aren't so sure about is whether Kingsland itself has enough to entertain the family once the Trail is done, but as we were originally commissioned by the local primary school to write it, it would be a shame not to share with everyone else. We are always happy to work with schools to help with fund raising as we did with this one, so do get in touch in you are on the PTA or are a teacher in a local school.

Beckford to Bredon Murder Mystery
What we love about this Trail is it really does explore parts of Worcestershire that lots and lots of you might not know exists. The small villages which are part of the Cotswolds are an absolute delight and must be seen if you are at all interested in the countryside. What we aren't so happy about is that we couldn't get the Trail to go up Bredon Hill itself in a sensible way, but we really hope that people take the opportunity whilst they are in the area to explore the hill itself. We are looking for retailers in the area who may be interested in stocking this Trail.

Ludlow Murder Mystery
The Trail is a delight for all lovers of Ludlow itself and who have been lured with the promise of local produce. The Trail starts and finishes in Castle Square where the market holds the key to many of the local producers and where Trailers can eat and drink some fab stuff. What we aren't so pleased about it, is although we have written it, it is in fact in Shropshire not in Herefordshire or Worcestershire, so when we finally get a licensee to take on Treasure Trails Shropshire, we will lose the Trail to them! If you know someone who might be interested in talking to us about the opportunity in Shropshire, do let us know.

Brecon Murder Mystery
What a surprise Brecon turned out to be. A really interesting town with a wonderful walk along the canal and the opportunity to see some brilliant views and much of historic interest. However, like Ludlow, it is out of our region and we will have to hand it to a new Powys licensee when we get one. Know anyone who wants a fun business to run who lives in Powys?

Inkberrow Murder Mystery
What we love about this new Trail is the opportunity it gives Trailers to explore three really interesting and pretty villages in the east of Worcestershire. What we are not so sure about is whether we should have started it in Astwood Bank, Feckenham or Inkberrow! Try it and let us know what you think!

Broadway

Earlier this week we (David and Amanda, who manage the Worcestershire region of Treasure Trails) spent the day in Broadway - one of a number of Cotswolds Villages. We had a really good day reviewing the Broadway Trail and meeting up with possible stockists and business owners. The outcomes of the day mean that we hope to get a great stockist signed up before the tourist season starts and possibly one or two businesses agreeing to sponsor a clue on the Broadway Spy Trail. Decisions will be taken over the next week, so if any retail outlets are interested in getting involved in the soon to be relaunched Broadway Spy Trail, get in touch as soon as possible.

We learnt lots about Broadway that we didn't already know including that an iron gate has significance when it looks really boring (see the picture) and that the next Broadway Arts Festival will take place in 2012! We found out that the Swings and Things have disappeared and been replaced with a super duper Activity Park which the locals are very proud of and had a really good lunch at one of the local pubs!

Some fab shops tried to tempt us into them and all in all we remembered what a truly lovely place Broadway is!

Do go there soon!

Treasure Trails Annual Conference

We had a great few days in Norwich a couple of weeks ago at the annual Treasure Trails conference. We travelled up on the Wednesday and met up with friends old and new from the Treasure Trails family - the conference proper didn't start until Thursday, but as we had to go from one side of the country to the other, it made sense to travel the day before. That evening, we had dinner at Yellows - Delia Smith's diner at the Norwich football ground. I was expecting a gourmet dinner at diner prices.... but I was disappointed. The menu was burgers and the like and I had chose a Cincinnati Chilli with 5 sides...... as I am writing this blog, I am struggling to remember the sides! I think one was red onion and one was sour cream, but not sure now and can't remember what the others were. I also ordered a side of homemade coleslaw which was £2.50 and delicious - the only thing on the whole plate that I really enjoyed, pity it was only a tablespoon full.

Anyway, onto the next day - we had a delicious breakfast and then I drove 4 of the others into town to do a specially written Norwich Treasure Trail. The five of us (some more experienced Trailers than others) set off with high hopes for a great exploring experience. I had never been to Norwich before, and of course doing a Trail is a fabulous way to see the sights! The Trail was fun and we found out lots of stuff about Norwich - we each had our booklet which was good because we chatted about some of the clues and how good they were and talked about different ways to use a plaque to write a good clue and I was able to write notes into my Trail booklet to bring home and crib from! The photo is of my fellow Trail detectives debating the merits of the clue on the post box!

After the Trail, we sat and had a coffee together before heading back to the hotel for the lunch and the start of the conference. Interestingly, the bill came to 12.31 which is less than the average Trail family spends whilst doing their Trail but every little helps with local economy.

Back at the hotel, we were ready to hear the words of wisdom from Steve, the MD of Treasure Trails and his HQ team. I won't reveal all the plans here, but suffice to say there are lots of new products coming up including the recently launched Personalised Trails and the soon to be launched Techno Trails - both of which are very exciting and will without a doubt enhance the Treasure Trails customers' experiences.

Dinner Thursday night was in the hotel and we sat on a table with our lovely Treasure Trails neighbours - Rachel and Stephen from TT Gloucestershire, Claire and Paul from TT Warwickshire and West Midlands and Sue and Ivan from TT Staffordshire.... we are so lucky with our TT neighbours and are really looking forward to the day when we have TT Shropshire, TT Powys and TT South Wales in position.

Friday after a full day of presentations and workshops, we retired again to the bar and then followed up with the Gala Dinner....and a chance for some traditional TT games and quizzes! We learnt some interesting stuff about HQ staff as well as people on our table.... we had a bungy jumper, a kite fanatic, a broken elbow story, a claim to fame by being live on the Richard and Judy Show and some other very tall tales indeed.

Roll on next year's conference... but in the meantime, we have an April date for our second regional meeting - this time in Warwickshire.