herefordshire and worcestershire treasure Trails - walks with a difference!

New Worcester Trails

2011-11-20T13:17:00.000Z

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

2011-11-11T13:24:00.001Z

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

2011-09-22T12:33:00.001+01:00

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

2011-09-06T16:11:00.000+01:00

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

2011-08-07T12:33:00.000+01:00

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?

2011-06-20T09:21:00.003+01:00

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

2011-06-14T16:01:00.002+01:00

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

2011-06-03T09:49:00.003+01:00

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!

2011-05-30T14:08:00.004+01:00

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

2011-05-30T10:24:00.004+01:00

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

2011-05-26T10:14:00.002+01:00

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

2011-02-04T09:08:00.002Z

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

2011-01-27T14:33:00.004Z

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.

One more to go

2010-12-14T07:19:00.002Z

We have one more show to do before the end of the year and that should be a really lovely one as the setting is fab and the atmosphere will be soooo festive. The show is in Hereford Cathedral and is part of their Carols for Christmas Shoppers initiative. It starts at 10.00 on Saturday morning, 18th December and goes onto 2.00pm.

Happy Christmas!

Sales

2010-11-03T15:58:00.002Z

Today we had Tony Armstrong of BMD Global with us in his capacity as Director of Licensees for Treasure Trails. Tony has a wealth of experience of sales training and creating strategy for businesses and we were hoping to learn from him. And I am delighted to report that we achieved our objective!

So watch out all your retailers out there.... I have a renewed focus and energy and want to get our Trails out to our local retailers! If you are a retailer reading this and want to be one of the first to stock.... get in touch!!

Where are we in November?

2010-10-19T18:17:00.001+01:00

Lots happening in the run up to Christmas, we can be found at the following events.......

A Shopping Evening at Trinity School, Hereford on Wednesday 10th November.

Lunch and Champagne at Malvern College on Thursday 11th November - let us know if you would like an invitation and we'll post one out to you! The event is in support of Help for Heroes

From 5.30 on Thursday, 18th November we are at The Feathers Hotel in Ledbury. There will be a Christmas market with a fantastic raffle of a portrait by a well-known local artist and will be a fun evening with funds going to the Noah's Ark Trust (a local charity giving support to bereaved children) and as the charity is the chosen one for both BBC Hereford and Worcester and the new Mayor of Ledbury, it'll be a very high-profile event (wear your glad-rags).

Switching to Worcestershire, we will again be at The Farncombe Christmas Art and Craft Fair near Broadway on Sunday, 21st November. This will be the third year for us and the quality of stalls and the opportunity to pick up one off gifts is brilliant. http://www.farncombeestate.co.uk/coursedetail.asp?course=2258

On the morning of Thursday, 25th November we will be outside at the Gloucester Quays Very Victorian Christmas Fair. We are holding the fort for Rachel, our Gloucestershire colleague who will take over during the afternoon and manage the stall for the next couple of days, so if you don't make it on the Thursday, then say hi to her from us!

We are at another Herefordshire school on Saturday, 27th November - The Bishop of Hereford’s Bluecoat School for an afternoon Christmas Fair which we are looking forward to.

Is it time for Christmas Yet?

2010-10-12T09:44:00.004+01:00

My resolution for the next few weeks is to really learn to blog properly. I've found various articles on how to blog and plan to put what I've learnt into practise.... meantime, I will continue on my usual vein!

Which is news from Treasure Trails Herefordshire and Worcestershire : a quick update on what we've been up to, since the last time!

e were at the Elms Hotel in Abberley, Worcestershire for one of Helen Hobden's Ladies that Lunch events - Champagne, lunch and shopping! I had a very small space behind the door to the second room and I think it will be one of the last times our spinner will be out as it is really on its last legs now..... met some nice ladies who bought Trails for Christmas pressies, but the consensus was that it was really a bit early for Christmas present buying and I tend to agree. There were some nice things there, but I for one don't want to start yet!

Lets get through half term first!

Treasure Trails Regional Meeting

2010-09-24T17:55:00.003+01:00

I really wanted to share the photo of the Treasure Trails teams from Herefordshire & Worcestershire along with Staffordshire, Warwickshire & West Midlands and Gloucestershire, but I can't upload the file - very frustrating........

Business is Booming

2010-09-24T17:47:00.003+01:00

Well what a fab week we've had picking up some potential business and some real business - I won't share the potential business just yet, but I am delighted to report that the real business is very exciting.......

The Bewdley Schools Project was confirmed on Monday - we have been asked to work with four schools in Bewdley to help them to create / write a Maths Trail around Bewdley which will be launched at the Discover Bewdley Festival next spring/early summer. We are to work with Beverley, one of the teachers and 8 children and their parents over a five week period with 5 x 2 hour school sessions. But, its not just that select few that will work on the Trail - there will be two competitions running alongside as well - one for years 5 & 6 to design the certificate that each Trailer will receive when they hand in their completed Trail and the second one which every child in all four schools will be invited to participate in to design the front cover of the Trail. The wow factor will be fantastic.... so watch this space! Oh, I nearly forgot we don't start the work until February half term.

The second project confirmed just today is that we have been commissioned by The Courtyard in Hereford to write a Hereford Arts Trail for launch in time for this year's pantomime which starts at the end of November. David has been working hard all afternoon researching the content and we hope to start walking the streets on Monday to determine the route and clues etc.,

So the Treasure Trail week ends on a high! Meantime, on Sunday we are at The Chase Hotel in Ross-on-Wye for a craft fair, so its business as usual too :)

Off the point, but SOOOOO true!!

2010-09-14T10:43:00.001+01:00

This was sent to me by email from an old HR contact and I just loved it so much, I wanted to capture it for others to read.......

We sat around the table trying to decide who was the best candidate for the job. Mary felt Sam should get the job. "Just look at his education," she said to Mark and I. "Based on his resume, he has the knowledge to do the job".

"But Mary look at Ellen. Her references said she is a hard worker, and, from the interview, you could tell she works hard. That is what we need here. Someone who is not afraid of a lot of work," exclaimed Mark.

I sat and listened to Mark and Mary debate over who was the best candidate for the job. Then they turned to me and said, "What do you think Kate? Is it knowledge or is it a hard worker we need for this job?"

"Both are important but there is one thing you are both missing," I said. They both looked at me like I was crazy. I explained by saying, "Knowledge is certainly important, but knowledge can be learned. And working hard is important. But if a person just works hard but they fail to see things that could be improved or fail to see a smarter way to work rather than just working and working, than that won't help us."
I could tell by the look on their faces that they wished they had not asked me to sit on this interview. We had been interviewing for 3 days now and they had narrowed it down to the two candidates that we were discussing. Now, here I am saying that it was neither of these candidates!

"I think Ruth would be the best candidate for the job." They looked at each other, but I held up my hand in protest and said, "Hear me out before you say anything. My reason for picking Ruth is because of her attitude."

"Attitude", both Mary and Mark said at the same time! "Yes, attitude," I replied.

"Let me explain. Ruth has good education credentials, and I agree that her credentials are not as good as Sam's. And Ruth's answers to the interview questions showed she would look for ways to improve how she performs a job rather than just working and working. The one thing that impressed me the most was her attitude. >From the reference checks, it confirms that she has a positive attitude and influences those around her. We need someone who can look at how and what we are doing, someone who will question the why and someone who will look for solutions."

I could see that Mark agreed with my thinking, but Mary was still impressed with Sam's education. "Mary, you can teach anyone the theory, but you can not teach someone the right attitude." Mary sat for a minute and thought about this. Finally, she replied, "You know Kate listening to you reminds me of my grandmother. She once showed me something that I had forgotten about. As you were talking, it flashed in my mind. Let me share my grandmothers way of thinking with you."

She stood up and went to the flipchart, and start writing the alphabet. Mark and I exchanged looks but let Mary continue.

She explained, "If you numbered the alphabet it would look like this."

She then proceeded to write on the flip chart,

A...B...C...D...E...F...G...H...I...J…..K…..L….M.....N....O
1...2...3...4...5….6....7....8...9...10...11..12. 13...14...15
P....Q....R....S....T.....U....V....W....X....Y....Z 16..17….18...19...20...21...22...23...24...25...26

She continued to write on the flip chart:

K = 11
N = 14
O = 15
W = 23
L = 12
E = 5
D = 4
G = 7
E = 5
Total 96 points

H = 8
A = 1
R = 18
D = 4
W = 23
O = 15
R = 18
K = 11
Total 98 points

A = 1
T = 20
T = 20
I = 9
T = 20
U = 21
D = 4
E = 5
Total 100 points

I was surprised when she was finished. I had never seen this done before. I suddenly realized I no longer had to explain to Mary the importance of attitude; her grandmother had done that for me. We all laughed and all agreed that Ruth was the successful candidate for the job!

You can work hard, you can have excellent educational credentials, but how many points would your attitude score?

Droitwich Spa Salt Day

2010-09-13T14:48:00.002+01:00

Considering when we arrived at Vines Park in Droitwich Spa and it was raining cats, dogs, frogs and fish - we had a really good day! On arrival, we sat in the car for ages waiting for the rain to pass, which it did eventually and we managed to get our marquee up without dropping too many bits in the mud and then down again at 5.00pm before the rain returned. I love the British, the fact that it is raining doesn't seem to phase them. They don their wellies and come out in it anyway and why not. If you wait for the rain to pass you don't do anything.

Again we met lots of seasoned Trailers and loved listening to their stories and we met some new potential addicts too! One or two people have started their Xmas shopping which seems pretty incredible to me, but then again, I love the whole Christmas shopping experience and like to leave it to much nearer the time.

So, Droitwich Spa Salt Day got the thumbs up and we hope to be back for a third year running in 2011 :).

Blog Writing & Show Experiences

2010-09-10T12:32:00.003+01:00

How to write a decent blog post is something that I think about on a regular basis and it seems that I've found a Business Link course that will tackle just that. Unfortunately, though it is full and I can't get a place on it anywhere local and however much I want to write a great blog entry, I can't justify the time or expense to drive to Solihull or wherever else the course is on. Will just have to wait until it comes back to Herefordshire!

Meantime, you, dear reader, will have to cope with my usual style!

So, what's new in our Treasure Trails world since I last blogged....we've been to the Monmouth Show and the Pershore Plum Festival - both of which were fun but for different reasons..... the Monmouth Show was really enjoyable because we shared our stand with Geoff from Treasure Trails West Wales.... in between sales we were able to exchange stories and swap tips and hints on how to be a great Treasure Trail licensee with Geoff. His patch is long and thin and he arranges his Trails on the stand in geographical order - something I hadn't thought of but works particularly well for his catalogue. He also uses an A frame which was up outside the marquee and I know drove at least one person in to try and find us. Note to self, buy an A frame for posters. Paul and Clare from Treasure Trails Warwickshire and West Midlands were also at the show, so it was almost like a mini regional meeting! We talked to several prospective licensees for Monmouth too - hope we get one for that area soon!

The Pershore Plum Festival was a fabulous show - partly because the sun shone, but more so because it felt that we were meeting up with old friends. Its the third year that we've been to the Pershore Plum Festival and not only are we on first name terms with many of the locals, but we met some experienced Trailers that we hadn't met before. The Guillaume family from London bought a Trail from us and did it there and then. They told us that they often do a day trip into Worcestershire from London especially to do one of our Trails and then on returning to London, they submit their answers and give us their feedback... .so it was wonderful to meet them and hear their stories. We also met up again with customer Maggie Skinner, who commissioned us in the past to create a personalised Trail for one of her friends, so it was lovely to see her. Lyndsay Smith from the Worcester Tourist Information Centre dropped by to say hi and tell us that her and her staff are looking forward to doing Worcester Riverside in the new year when the TIC is closed for refurbishment. Another lady dropped by to say thank you for sending out the newsletters that we do and that she was only there because of our newsletter otherwise she wouldn't have known that Pershore had a Plum Festival!

All in all a great day out!

Winners

2010-08-25T16:43:00.003+01:00

On hearing the news that they had won three free Trails, the third names out of the hat on the Treasure Hunt Day for all the Family gave us this quote

'Apart from the rain, we had a fantastic time searching around Hereford and having the chance to learn some more of Hereford's history from the places that we just usually walk past. It was great to be out enjoying the outdoors and to put our brains into action, the perfect recipe for outdoor fun! We can't wait to try our new Treasure Trails.'

Sums it all up beautifully!

Thank You

2010-08-23T17:11:00.002+01:00

Just sent out a thank you to all those who came to the Treasure Hunt Day for all the Family.....

Thank You

Well the weather was horrible, but still you came and tried one of our Treasure Hunts for all the Family! Thank you very much! The first, second and third out of the hat have been contacted and we are delighted that there was one person from each of the three types of Trails - easy, medium and hard.

The first name out of the hat was Claudia Williams. She said "we had a really fun and interesting day out even in the rain and wind which was so bad that our umbrella broke!" She had done the hard one. Second out of the hat was Rebecca Harris who did the easy one and third was Summer Reade & Holly Smith who did the medium one together.

If you had fun, then maybe you'd like to try one of our Treasure Trails in Herefordshire or Worcestershire - the medium and hard Trails were based on our standard Hereford and Hereford East Trails, but we have a third one around Hereford called Old Hereford which you can view if you click here.

Both David and Amanda will be at the biggest one day show in Wales - the Monmouth Show, which this year is being held on Thursday, 26th August. It is a fabulous day out situated on the banks of the River Wye in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We will also be at the Pershore Plum Festival on Monday, 31st August. Visitors can enjoy an abundance of ‘plum’ themed foods, ranging from ice cream to sausages and of course home grown delicious plums. The town will be transformed into plummy heaven to guarantee a great festival atmosphere. We hope to see you there.
So enjoy the rest of the holidays and we hope you have fun and get out and about in the fresh air!

And the Winner was Claudia

2010-08-23T10:08:00.001+01:00

Treasure Hunt Day for all the Family

2010-08-19T09:40:00.004+01:00

Well its nearly here, after months of planning and collaborating and getting to know more people our Day for All The Family is tomorrow!

Take a look at the leaflet on this link http://www.treasuretrails.co.uk/herefordshire/20-August-2010.html

And listen to the radio on Friday morning BBC Hereford and Worcester - Tony Fisher's programme. Apparently, our pre-recorded and subsequently edited piece will go out between 9.00am and 10.00am. Caroline Forster from the Change4Life team and I met Julie, the researcher on a windy day earlier in the week (Monday) and told her all about our hopes for the day and why we were doing it.

We've got some great prizes - working on a first, second and third out of the hat process we have a family ticket for the Mappa Mundi exhibition in the cathedral together with 4 books from the Usborne "Make it" series. We have a cash prize equivalent to the number of treasure hunt booklets we sell tomorrow and we have 3 free Trails to give away. There will be goodie bags for all the kids that complete the Treasure Hunts and lots of balloons around too.

So, come and find us on the Cathedral Close between 10.00am and 2.00pm tomorrow - do either our easy, medium or hard Trail and the draw will take place at 3.45pm. The easy Trail is suitable for the smaller children who have to find the Normans. The medium and hard Trails are suitable for 7 years and upwards. The medium one is a murder mystery which takes around 1 and a bit hours and is centred around the city and the hard one takes about 2 hours and is a spy Trail which goes all the way out to Bartonsham Dairy and back along the river.

Hopefully those new to our Trails will get a taste for them and try one of the others in our catalogue of nearly 30!

Kidderminster Shuttle

2010-08-09T11:36:00.002+01:00

A lovely published article by Cadisha Brown has resulted in quite a few sales - thank you Kidderminster Shuttle!

She wrote on Thursday 29th July :> Follow the clues to find smugglers’ treasure

MURDER mystery, treasure hunt and spy trails can be explored in Wyre Forest to help beat summertime boredom.

Youngsters and their families looking for some outdoor fun can search for treasure on a two-hour treasure hunt trail in Stourport.

Their quest will be to search for gold and silver bullion that was stolen by smugglers from a royal barge heading down the canal to the River Severn in the 18th century.

They will be given a map with clues around the town leading to the treasure’s location.

In Kidderminster, wannabe detectives can try to solve the clues in a murder mystery trail.

The case involves a series of unsolved murders committed in the town, which have been reopened.

It starts and finishes in Weavers Wharf and those taking part have to help solve the clues and work out who did the murders and what weapon was used.

Meanwhile, the Bewdley spy trail starts in Gardeners Meadow car park, where youngsters have to help “agent Jane Pond” follow clues and find the deactivation code for a device planted by “Dr Horribly Bad”.

He plans to flood Worcestershire and has planted the device somewhere in the town.

The trails have been organised by Treasure Trails Herefordshire and Worcestershire. It was started by David and Amanda Ingham with the aim of getting local people and visitors to see and learn more about the area.

David said: “We all know that British summertime weather can be a bit unpredictable but walking, exploring and solving clues is just as much fun in the sunshine as in the rain.

“Treasure trails are a great activity for the whole family to complete together as children, parents and grandparents can all get involved in finding and solving our exciting, innovative and fun mysteries.”

Further information about the trails can be obtained by logging on to the website at www.treasuretrails.co.uk

So much News

2010-07-14T12:16:00.002+01:00

There is so much happening at the moment and so much news I don't know where to start.....

Stourport Web want to include our info
Ledbury Books and Maps now stock Treasure Trails
Inspire Hereford are going to do a Treasure Trail for their summer social
We've renewed our membership of Visit Hereford
Bromyard Info want to take our news
Redditch Advertiser have taken our Swashbuckling summer holidays ideas news
Treasure Hunts for all the family is coming along nicely
Poston Mill press release needs to be followed up
Swashbuckling Summer Holiday Ideas has gone out to 7 local papers
Dunfield House has been tested and is ready for marketing

and all these things need me to write up news items for the Treasure Trails website! Sometime soon :-)

Press Releases - Swashbuckling summer holiday ideas

2010-07-12T11:12:00.002+01:00

Well, I've sent out the following press release to 7 newspapers in the Worcestershire area - wonder if any of them will print :)

Are you looking for a new way to keep the children entertained this summer? And on a budget? Herefordshire based Treasure Trails has the perfect solution. They have created nearly 30 treasure hunt adventures in local towns and villages which will give you a fun and exciting day out, without the theme park price tag.
As every parent knows, finding six weeks of activities to keep everybody in the family entertained can be a challenge and getting them to do something in the outdoors that is healthy and educational at the same time sounds too good to be true! For just £5 a Treasure Trail will engage the whole family in solving an intriguing mystery and will show you a multitude of fascinating, historical and unusual things about your town that you probably wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
The Trails are completed in your own time and are Treasure Hunt, Murder Mystery and Spy Mission themed walks. An easy to follow route will take you to the most beautiful and interesting places in that area and answers to the clues are located on existing monuments and buildings. Gary Lineker is just one of the growing host of fans, having had lots of fun with his then fiancée Danielle on a Treasure Trail around Armagh last year.
Dawn Thomas and her family recently completed a Treasure Trail and said ‘What a great idea! We saw so much more of the city than if we had just wandered around aimlessly. It was a great (and cheap!) way to get the family to visit somewhere new and have fun whilst learning a bit of history. Thanks, I’ll be buying more for our holiday in August.’
David and Amanda Ingham started Treasure Trails Herefordshire & Worcestershire in 2008 with the aim of getting local people and visitors to see and learn more about the area. David said ‘We all know that British summertime weather can be a bit unpredictable but walking, exploring and solving clues is just as much fun in the sunshine as in the rain! Treasure Trails are a great activity for the whole family to complete together as children, parents and grandparents can all get involved in finding and solving our exciting, innovative and fun mysteries.’
So if you are stuck for something to do this summer, whether at home or on holiday, for just £5 for your group a Treasure Trail will help the whole family explore and learn on an exciting adventure.
Go to www.treasuretrails.co.uk to find out more and to download a free activity sheet for your children.

Its gone to :
Worcester News
Kidderminster Shuttle
Bromsgrove Advertiser
Stourport Town website
Ludlow and Tenbury Wells Advertiser
Malvern Gazette
Redditch Advertiser

TREASURE TRAILS SET TO ENJOY SOME MUSIC

2010-07-07T14:14:00.002+01:00

Treasure Trails Herefordshire and Worcestershire will be in Droitwich Spa High Street from 10 to 5 on Saturday, 10th July enjoying the programme of music and selling Trails! The live music ranges from a folk /country trio called Bric a Brac, through a classical violinist, Shulah Oliver, Matt Sinton a singer, Catch 23 a covers band and JT an acoustic covers singer. It finishes at 4.00 with Stomping on Spiders - so there is something for everyone!

We just hope they don't all drown out our sales patter!

Anyway, the Droitwich Spa Treasure Trail is a wonderful way to see the town in all its Music Festival glory and we are looking forward to introducing more people to Treasure Trails through the Festival.

The Sunday Times

2010-06-30T10:32:00.003+01:00

This is what the Sunday Times said this week as part of their 50 best summer days out article

20. Treasure trails, Norfolk
The brief is this: a flask of extremely powerful sleeping gas has been unearthed during construction work in Bircham. Unless the deactivation code is found, the toxin will be released, plunging the whole of Norfolk into a deep sleep. (Will anyone notice?) Your mission is to use your bike to find the clues and save the county. It’s terrific fun, and just one of hundreds of similarly offbeat adventures — on foot, by bike, in the car and even by boat — offered around the country by Treasure Trails (01872 263692, treasuretrails.co.uk). You pick your county, pick an adventure, pay a fiver and download the mission brief. Then, when you’ve completed the trail, you email the code word back to the company for the chance of winning up to a grand.

New Trails

2010-06-23T16:17:00.005+01:00

We've now written two new Trails which we are really pleased with. One is a 3 mile walking or cycling Trail which runs along the river at Symonds Yat. The Facts: In around AD 900 the Viking Army of Eric, The Blood Axe, landed near Chepstow, crossed the Forest of Dean and set up base at Symonds Yat. The Fiction? An ancient map was discovered recently which may shed light on where Viking treasure is buried. Can you solve the clues to find the location of the Viking booty?

The Trail did really well at the Three Counties Show at the weekend and we sold lots of booklets. Wonder how many sales we missed out on by not writing it earlier!

On the other hand, we also launched a new Trail called Old Hereford at the show and we sold NONE of them.... and I thought Old Hereford would be a catchy name which would attract people to it! It is however, a lovely Trail through the old bits of Hereford and the back story is that many years ago, when rumours abounded that the Vikings were coming, the Herefordian monks collected up their most precious manuscripts and chalices and hid them in a place that has never been identified. Can you be the ones to unearth it?

Both Trails are in the Treasure Map format and to celebrate their launch, we will send one of each through email to the first 3 people to contact us by email to amanda@treasuretrails.co.uk and then await your feedback to see which one you like best.... bearing in mind that David wrote one of them and Amanda wrote the other and regular readers of this blog will know how competitive we are!

New Website, New Trails, New Licensees

2010-06-22T17:42:00.004+01:00

There is so much that has been happening that its difficult to know where to start!

New Website
We have a brand new website which is fresh and exciting and hopefully more logical for the customers than the old one. The website has the same address as before www.treasuretrails.co.uk but is far better optimised and has more functionality. We are delighted with it. However, its an ongoing item on the to do list because we've learnt that its no good leaving it to lie fallow now, but we need to constantly add and refresh the pages to ensure it stays high up in Google's ratings and rankings!

Marketing the business

2010-06-03T12:38:00.004+01:00

There is so much to be done in marketing the business and so many ideas to choose from its hard to know where to start!

I went on a course run by Business Link called How To Get Results from your Marketing, Easily! It was run by Rob Lowell of Sales and Marketing Ideas Ltd & it was great - there are as I said, lots of ideas! Translating them into actions is harder and actions that are cost effective or have the ability to be measured and so work out the return on investment is difficult to! Finding the time is proving tough to even do the simplest of things! Take this blog for instance. Its been weeks since I did an entry and I've also been asked to provide a guest blog for a local BnB which is fab news, but what do I say and when do I get around to doing it and how will I know that its been a good use of my time!

I haven't even followed up the leads of great people I met on the course.....so FOCUS is the key I think and therefore this afternoon I am going to:

1. Write a press release about our two new Trails due to be launched at the Three Counties.
2. Follow up on the leads I picked up at the Marketing Course.
3. Write that guest blog
4. Empty my email inbox!

But first..... LUNCH! Or perhaps a quick peek in Twitter.... I have now have 671 followers and the latest tweet I wrote said "Best Hereford things on a sunny day? 1. Walk around a pretty market town. 2. Enjoy a cider in the sunshine. 3. Do a Treasure Trail"

Twitter Press Release

2010-05-11T16:03:00.005+01:00

I can't believe it really - I sent in a press release to the Hereford Times, way back at the beginning of March and it was printed at the end of April - just shows that they do keep things tucked away for when there is a space! Anyway, here it is!

End of the Week...

2010-04-23T15:56:00.004+01:00

..... and another busy day in the Treasure Trails Herefordshire & Worcestershire office.....

Newsletter has been sent out to 322 subscribers!
Retail order has been packaged up and sent out to Harvington Hall (its a restock which is especially exciting).
Bespoke Trail request has been responded to and a meeting set up for next week.
Decision taken on advertising with Ideasforkids - we will!
Stock take done and an additional 100+ Trails ordered from the printer, hopefully getting here in time for next week's shows
Preparation done for next week's shows - the boxes of equipment were a mess since the last show we did at Xmas
Telephone conversation with Bewdley TIC - hopefully they are going to order a stock of local Trails, but no decision yet
Office tidied up for the weekend and writing this blog is the last thing on my Friday to do list!

Newsletter says....
Happy Bank Holiday

As I write this letter the sun is shining and the long range forecast for the bank holiday weekend is good. Three days of rest and recreation for many of you hopefully ~ what are you going to do with them? We are at the University of the Great Outdoors being held in the beautiful grounds of Hampton Court near Leominster and have set up a Treasure Trail around the site, which we'd love you to come and do.

However, you spend your time at the weekend, we hope you have fun and get out and about in the fresh air!

Trail Experiences
Our new Treasure Trails neighbour in Gloucestershire has been writing Trails and we've had the opportunity to test two of them. Cheltenham and Bristol Waterfront - both really interesting towns and some wonderfully cryptic clues to find. I did the Cheltenham one in the rain on my own and the Bristol one with a friend in glorious sunshine, and thoroughly enjoyed both which just shows you can have a great time whatever the weather! Guess which one I liked the best though!

Everyone has a tale to tell and we'd love to hear yours.......the first five of you to let us know what your day was like when you did one of our Trails, will have your story posted on our blog and we will send you a thank you voucher worth £5.00.

Click to read the Treasure Trails Blog

Shows and Fairs

Next Wednesday, 28th we will be at the Spring Gardening Show at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire in aid of the Red Cross. A must for all enthusiasts of gardening and the outdoors, this popular event features more than 80 quality stalls. As well as being able to roam the castle and grounds, including the magnificent arboretum, visitors can buy plants for the garden, the terrace, the conservatory, the pond, the woodland garden and the wildflower meadow oh, and a Treasure Trail or two!

On Saturday and Sunday of the bank holiday we will be at The University of the Great Outdoors at Hampton Court, Herefordshire. If you are looking for fun, adventure, excitement or just something different, this two day festival is the event for you. The wide choice of taster sessions gives you the opportunity to try out a range of activities gathered together in the spectacular gardens at Hampton Court. This is your chance to try a brand new ‘extreme' sport on the Brush Ramp, the only one of its kind in the world (at the moment). Ride your board down a ramp of rotating brushes, with Pro Riders who will demonstrate this new sport and help you learn the moves. This year, there will also be a demonstration by the English Blind Football Team, a prelude to the World Blind Football Championships in August 2010. Look out for our Treasure Trails' Bee Trail set around the grounds of the Festival.

On Bank Holiday Monday, we will be The Dilwyn Show - a first for us. Called a Grand Day out for All the Family, the show is at Fields Place Meadow and promises to be a fun day with a horse and dog show as well as numerous stalls. We'd love to see you there especially as the proceeds go to local charities including the Acorn Children's Hospice and Leominster's Riding for the Disabled.

We hope to see you at one of the above shows, but in the meantime, have a relaxed and happy Bank Holiday!
David & Amanda

Variety

2010-04-19T16:05:00.003+01:00

What I love about managing the Treasure Trails license for Herefordshire and Worcestershire is the sheer variety of every day!

Today is a good example.... I have worked on the challenge pages for a personalised Trail we are putting together for a hen party coming to the area in May.

I have written up all the testimonials we received over the last week into our new website and captured the names and email addresses into our customer database.

I have also written up our April newsletter ready to send out to our customers! I have cleared a high proportion of emails and as a result of re-reading the one from Business Link I have signed up to go to a half day seminar on Marketing.

I have tweeted of course!

I have welcomed a new Treasure Trails colleague and got to know them a little bit better - they are managing the Lancashire and Greater Merseyside area.

I have discussed our plans for adding Twitter and other contact information to page 7 of the Trail booklets now we have the new Text Line in place!

I have processed all the orders that came in over the weekend.

I have embarked on amending our Kingsland Trail so that it can be published and I am about to do a stock take in time for our show next week at Eastnor Castle.

Phew, after that lot, I think I'll have a rest, make a cup of tea and get the washing in!!

Bespoke Trails

2010-04-15T14:09:00.003+01:00

Bespoke Trails are an exciting part of the Treasure Trails product portfolio. By their very nature every single one is different and we seem to have successfully got several tailor made Trails to design over the next few weeks.....

We are close to delivering the Bee Trail for the University of the Great Outdoors which has the visitors to Hampton Court looking all around the grounds for Bees which we are hoping will be delivered in the next couple of days from the supplier.

We have designed a Bird Trail for a local camp site, which will be used exclusively by them throughout the summer.

We are commissioned by our local church to produce a Village Challenge for the second year running which will incorporate not only a Trail of some sort round the village but also a puzzle, a treasure collection and a tie breaker as well.

We are working on an event for the NHS Change4Life initiative and in association with Hereford Cathedral which will involve local Trails and be held during the summer holidays - probably on a Friday - look out for details on here and in the local press.

And we hope to provide a Strawberry Trail for the Worcester Strawberry Festival - we are just waiting for the go ahead from them.

Love this part of the job.... being creative! Perhaps I should do a graphic design course!

Carn Brea - Cornwall

2010-04-07T13:54:00.003+01:00

Its been such a busy few days with Easter in the middle, that I haven't had a chance to write up about the fun we had doing the Carn Brea Driving Trail in Cornwall when we were down there a few weeks ago.

Carn Brea itself was amazing - the views were awesome and the restaurant sited in the castle up there was incredible! But I am getting ahead of myself.....

The mission we were on was to stop another of Dr Madden-Badd's madcap ideas. Inspired by the legend of the giant Bolster, who could bridge the 6 mile gap between Carn Brea and St Agnes Beacon in stride, he has invented a device with similar capabilities. It uses a strong force field installed in the soles of a pair of hiking boots and a power unit that can be carried in a back pack. With it he can escape from the direst trap and we needed to find the secret code to disable his device!

We started the Trail at Gwennap Pit by the village of St Day. This was an absolutely amazing place and totally unexpected. We thought it would be just to do with tin or silver mining, but in actual fact it was (and I am now quoting from the Trail) a favoured venue of the founder of Methodism - John Wesley. He preached there in this amphitheatre which was created by mining subsidence. It really is worth seeing as I had no idea there was anything like it around. One of the two clues there was easy and the other a little harder to find which gave us a flavour of the type of Trail we were on!

As this is a driving Trail, we had to get back into the car and head off to Carn Brea, to find three clues.... none of which were obvious, but it was a great place to wander about and get a sense of history! It was also incredibly windy up there!

After that we were directed to a disused copper mine where we spent ages looking for the picture clue as we had a photograph as a reference point and had to get ourselves to that place using the photo and once in position, we would see the clue..... finding the position was tough, but we managed it in the end and enjoyed the search.

Off then to a tiny little park next to a pub (!) but we weren't ready to stop for refreshments just yet.... the park had a wonderful set of information boards and we discovered the Cornish word for a toad (cronek) as well as another name for otter
droppings (spraint) - you see, they really are educational as well as fun!!

Clue 13 in the park was one of those that you really have to use your brain..... it said, and I quote, "list the 6 different 4 letter words found below this picture. Applying the values A-1, B-2, C-3..... Y-25, Z-26 calculate which word gets the highest score!! As we aren't allowed to submit our answer, I am ashamed to say I haven't yet worked out the answer BUT, really liked the clue and may well use it on one of our new Herefordshire or Worcestershire Trails.

Back in the car to Tehidy Country Park where we had a walk around a lake and picked up more answers to clues and sat for a bit to watch the wildlife! Finally, we made it Hells Mouth and then onto Gwithian - the whole thing took nearly 3 hours and we were certainly ready for some refreshments by then. Gwithian didn't really appeal, so we headed off to St Ives for a Cornish Pasty and sit by the harbour - a fitting end to a really lovely morning's entertainment!

Not content with writing Trails, we go on them too!

2010-03-20T10:17:00.007Z

Last week when we were on holiday in Newquay, we went on three different Trails written by the Cornwall team! We had such fun and what made it so great, was they were all three very different.

Perranporth was the first one we did. On arrival in Perranporth, we thought it looked like a small touristy type of town which wouldn't be particularly interesting. As it happened, it most likely isn't that interesting because the Trail took us out of town!! Anyway, we had to start at the Tourist Information Centre which isn't that far from the front and then we headed towards the beach, picking up clues on the way. We left the beach and headed back towards town to find the answer to a great clue on the Museum. Really liked it and will copy it and incorporate it into one of our Herefordshire or Worcestershire Trails. It said ... "At the library, find how many letters are in the word after Heritage. What letter appears in the corresponding position in the name of the museum?" Made us stop, think and count!! The Trail took us into a gorgeous little park with a boating pond and then to a seat commemorating the guy who gave his name to the Austin Healey car - very interesting little plaque. Finally, we walked through a playground, up a big hill and out onto the cliffs and the most gorgeous views. Stopping on the way for a chat with a man who owns the castle at the top of the hill! Last clues were on a gigantic sundial which we NEVER would have seen without the Trail taking us up there! We met a pair of fellow trailers too - they were from Reading and it was their first one - virgin Trailers!!

A couple of days later we tackled the Truro Trail. This was a very different kettle of fish. Unlike the Perranporth Trail which was out in the countryside and incidentally, a spy mission. This was in the county town and murder mystery! We drove towards Truro and as we weren't sure where the start was and we knew we needed to finish by the cathedral, we decided to start the Trail half way round - at Clue 9 to be precise! There are so many great things about the Treasure Trails, and one of them is that you can start wherever you like! Lots of the Trail is written in rhyme as well which is fun! For example, Clue 11 says.....
Return to the Shops, left you go,
When the cathedral is in sight, take it slow.
Around this square of 2 buildings a name is engraved,
This man didn't do it - his reputation is saved!

We raced around the Trail, because we knew that at the end we had a lunch date and we wanted to spend a bit of time in the Treasure Trails Head Office too. The best part of the Trail was in the Victoria Gardens, close to the viaduct which we learnt was built in 1904 replacing Isambard Kingdom Brunel's original one. It was a lovely garden which fountains and band stands but we were a little early for the spring flowers which in a week or two would be gorgeous.

We gave ourselves another day of rest and then set out for our final Trail. This was a driving Trail called Carn Brea. More on that in my next blog!

Endorsement from the Ramblers

2010-03-09T09:25:00.005Z

We were really happy to see our Trails reviewed in the book section of this week's Rambler's Magazine! Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Article in the Cornish Guardian

2010-03-05T16:22:00.004Z

The quality isn't great, but its great to see the publicity!! Click on the picture to enlarge it.

And another week ends

2010-03-05T15:18:00.005Z

I can't believe how fast time flies - I must be having fun! Actually, I am in no doubt - I am having fun!!

The week started with a meeting in our local church with the Church Events Committee - a formidable group of ladies, chaired by a sole gentleman, who determine the events that will fund raise for the church. Last year they asked us to run a treasure hunt for them and it seems they want something similar again this year! We are delighted to be asked and presented some ideas on Monday all of which they seemed very excited about! Just need to work out how to do a treasure hunt round a very small village that has already had treasure hunted round it before! Think we will most likely come up with a hunt, a game and a puzzle and then the ubiquitous limerick as the tie breaker!

Spent some of the week liaising with the Change4Life lady to get the adverts just right on our Trails - they have sponsored 5 of our Hereford Trails which we are delighted about. Next steps are to put together an organised event with them!

Later in the week we met up with two representatives from the Worcestershire branch of The Prince's Trust fund raising committee and had a fab lunch with them at The Glasshouse in Worcester. Great food and good company. Viv and John had some thoughts and ideas about how we could market Treasure Trails and we hope to work with Viv and HotelShopUK in the future using the Trails as promotional incentives. Probably not until early next year, but watch this space! Viv also offered me some telesales training and I think I will take her up on it!

Have prepared for the stand we are on at Crufts - it is a stand run by rgtperrybarr.co.uk/ who are giving us a tiny space on it and so, I've sorted out 90 Trails for them together with a poster and a crib sheet. The plan is that I will sell on Day One and then leave them to it for the remaining days. Hope the Trails go down well with all those doggy people! Stand number is in Hall 4 Stand 76 - come and say hi.

Today, I've been in creative mode - twittering as usual but have also written two draft press releases, both of which will be pasted in here just as soon as they are agreed to by the other interested parties - Change4Life and the Kings Head Hotel, Ross-on-Wye.

The desk is tidy, but the floor and the sofa are littered with stuff and so the next job on the To Do List is to get them cleared and the whole office looking tidy ready to start the next week!

Another Great Week

2010-02-19T14:36:00.003Z

Had another exciting, fun and productive week in the world of Treasure Trails H & W.

Twitter continues to amuse and delight me and I am loving the new relationships I am forming with people that I wouldn't otherwise have met. Twitter forms a backdrop to my week and dipping in and out of it throughout the week means I am constantly being stimulated by what I read of other people's thoughts, blogs, ideas and tips!

Four exciting meetings this week to report on..... first one was with a hotel in Ross-on-Wye called The Kings Head. I met up with James Vidler the owner, who'd contacted me originally through Twitter and we talked about how we could do business together which would benefit both of us. He has decided to not only stock some of our regular Trails but to commission us to adapt the Ross Trail to start and finish from The Kings Head, in the High Street. If these go well, then he will think about commissioning more specials for his customers.

My second meeting was with the Tourist Information Centre in Ross-on-Wye. Clare O'Reilly, the manager is wonderfully supportive of the product and gave me some great feedback about what people are looking for in terms of activities when they arrive in the town.

I also met with Christine Prosser, from Visit Herefordshire, who is responsible for the events that they arrange to attract tourists into the county. We are working with her to provide a "Bee Trail" for the University of the Great Outdoors event happening in Herefordshire in May and she is pleased with how it is shaping up. Lots of work to do on the project, not least of which is to find a sponsor to cover the production costs of the bees themselves and the trail leaflet.

Meeting number four was with Lisa Purslow, the Healthy Lifestyle Coordinator in the Herefordshire PCT, with a view to exploring how Treasure Trails can help with her goals and objectives around the Change4Life national and local campaigns. We talked through some ideas and I am sure that we will be able to work together in some way or another. Obesity is a growing problem!

Lots of Trails sold this week through the internet, although not as many as I'd have hoped as it was half term but it wasn't half term with weather conducive to being out and about exploring! Roll on the summer.

Publicity

2010-02-11T16:45:00.003Z

Great publicity for our North East Scotland licensee :>

TRAIL BLAZERS SCOOP BIG PRIZE

Published Date: 05 February 2010
A COUPLE are celebrating an unexpected windfall thanks to their problem solving abilities.

Raymond and Margaret Simpson won £346.50 after successfully completing the Stonehaven Murder Mystery trail and being randomly selected as North-east winners in the Treasure Trails annual regional competition.
Treasure Trails write murder mystery,treasure hunt and spy mission trails which get people outside, exploring their local area and having fun. The trails follow a fairly short route so the whole family can join in and get some exercise, whilst learning about the most beautiful and interesting places in their area.
After completing the Stonehaven Murder Mystery trail, the couple then submitted their answer online before being notified about their win. Margaret and Raymond, who help run the Aberdeen branch of Jog Scotland, were delighted to hear of their good fortune.
Margaret said: "It was a very nice surprise when we heard we had won. The trails are a great idea for different groups of people to learn more about their area or other areas and suitable for families too. I'd been to Stonehaven many times, but the trail introduced me to things I'd never noticed in the town before. And it's cheap too - there are not many family days out that you can have for just a fiver!"
Raymond added: "We liked it so much that we are thinking of introducing some of the trails to our Jog Scotland routes."
Treasure Trails North-east Scotland was started by Liz Johnston in 2008 after she completed one of the trails in Glasgow.
She said: "We wondered what on earth we were going to do, how we were going to keep four adults, four children and a dog occupied whilst having fun for the afternoon, especially when it turned out to be grey and drizzly.
"The trail offered the perfect solution as it sounded very enjoyable, we would be outdoors and everyone would be exercising, including the dog! Having downloaded the trail from the website, I noticed that you could buy a licence for the area. I sent off for details and the rest is history."
The company was started in Cornwall by Steve Ridd MBE in 2005, with the aim of getting local people out and about exploring all the beautiful and historical places Cornwall has to offer.
Liz added: "The excitement of solving the clues and having some fun in the great outdoors with family and friends is all the incentive our customers need to do a Treasure Trail. But we also add a competitive element to spice things up a bit!'
The company now has over 380 Treasure Trails across the whole of the UK and gave away nearly £5,000 this year in prizes. Go to www.treasuretrails.co.uk for more information.

All Good Stuff

2010-02-11T15:33:00.004Z

Had a really good week with Treasure Trails which began with a trip to Poston Mill to meet the owners and marketing manager and talk through how we can help them with Things to Do for their guests. Have worked on a proposal with different ideas which hopefully will appeal to them, just got to wait now.

Monday afternoon, met up with a lady that up to now I have only tweeted with. Was such fun to chat face to face - hope to meet her again soon!

Monday evening had the new Treasure Trails licensees for Warwickshire and West Midlands over for dinner and to exchange news and views about the Treasure Trails business - so great to have one of the counties that joins ours now occupied and we look forward to doing some of their Trails in due course.

Tuesday caught up with some of the admin - still chasing our prize winners from the prize draw we did early January - only two more to track down now! Maybe they don't want their three free Trails :) Also had an invitation to join Visit Herefordshire at the NEC for the Outdoor Show, so hope we get to take that up as it would be a good practise run for when we go up there for Crufts in March.

Wednesday, heard from the Golden Valley and Black Mountain experience, a local conglomerate of cottages and B&Bs, who have asked for some Trails to do together at the start of British Tourism Week, so hope to get some reasonable publiciity out of that. Gave them three copies of the Golden Valley Trail which is a driving Trail starting in Madley and finishing at Arthur's Stone near Hay on Wye. British Tourism Week starts on 14th March, so they are going to do the Trail then.

Also on Wednesday, packaged up Susanna's Challenge - a challenge we have put together for a group of hens, which they will do at the end of the month in Ledbury. they will have a fab time.

Last night, met up with the Inspire Herefordshire Ladies networking group - a really great group of women. We had a talk on Social Media from Heather Gorringe of Wiggly Wigglers and Christine Hope of Hopes of Longtown which was really inspirational and gave us all a renewed sense of purpose!

Today, more admin stuff including booking some more fairs and shows for this year and generally twittering and preparing for various meetings next week.

Article in the Scotsman

2010-02-01T13:26:00.003Z

Fantastic article in last Saturday's The Scotsman by a Trailer - worth a read. Click on the picture to get it to a size that's readable !!

Review of 2009

2010-01-12T16:56:00.002Z

We've just done a review of 2009 and put together a folder of all the good stuff we achieved and its amazing how satisfying it is to look at 12 months worth of work and be pleased and proud of it.... we've done a 12 page challenge for a lady called Sophie which was for her hen party and consisted of the Hereford Trail together with puzzles, quizzes, photo competition and shopping challenges and much fun was had by all - we've actually just done another 12 page challenge, but I can't tell you the content until after the event, so it remains the contents remain secret to the lady who commissioned it - she is going to be 50 and has a group of friends all staying at Upper Fields Farm near Ross-on-Wye. We've also put together several personalised Trails - some for hens and some for birthdays. We loved doing the personalisations and we try to make them special and of course unique to the person who has asked for it.

We've also had lots of successes with our marketing efforts, including this blog of course and twitter!

Plus our bespoke Trails and Organised events have caused us pain in the making, but have been fab "on the day" as it were!!

So much done and so much more to do....... !! Onwards and upwards to 2010 (is it twenty ten or two thousand and ten, doesn't anyone know??)

New Trail ready !

2010-01-08T15:52:00.002Z

Spent the day creating a new mini (9 clues) Trail that can be done around a room as part of a presentation / talk to a group - maybe the WI, or a networking group or something along those lines... .now need to find groups to talk to! Have priced up multimedia machines, but can't find anything under £199, so may not be able to buy one at this stage, but hope that any where I end up talking to has one otherwise the presentation needs to be delivered without visual aids and I don't think it works as well.

Trailing in the Snow

2010-01-05T13:28:00.003Z

Beautiful day today if you are inside! This is the view from our kitchen window which is where I have been gazing out of!

This morning have put together all the games and puzzles for a Personalised Challenge we are arranging for a lady who is celebrating her 50th Birthday. she is staying at Upper Fields Farm in Llangarron and was looking for something to entertain her friends with on the Saturday. They are having a quiz Friday evening and then going out somewhere for dinner Saturday evening and will do the Challenge during the day. Think its going to work out really well for her.... hope so - will post any feedback we get!

Happy New Year

2010-01-03T12:23:00.002Z

Bright sunny Sunday and a few minutes to update the blog - last month was crazy with lots of shows and craft fairs to attend, lots of telephone orders to process and lots of Christmas stuff to do on a personal front!

Tomorrow work starts again in earnest, but in the meantime, blog hits are up to 582 and my new year's resolution is to keep this blog up to date and hopefully interesting!

Prize winners for 2009 have been notified and I am waiting for them to get back to me with which free Trails they want sent out to them - more on that in a later blog.

Marketing plans for 2010 are being developed and we have some interesting data to share on last year's metrics - again more on that later.

Watch this space!!

Guilty

2009-12-02T09:29:00.004Z

Feel very guilty that I haven't updated this blog for over a month and notice that we have had 537 hits which is 216 more than a month ago and so I must get to it!

Later though..... !!

Hit Counter

2009-10-23T09:24:00.003+01:00

The last time I looked at the hit counter was Sept 23 - one whole month ago. The blog was registering as having had 321 hits then and now the number is 448 - which is about 4 hits a day - not great, but not terrible either!

Where does the Time Go?

2009-10-23T09:19:00.003+01:00

I can't believe its been so long since I last wrote a blog entry and when I look to see what I've been doing it feels like a lot of time spent doing nothing particularly productive.

One success however, is my Twitter account. I now have 140 followers and the number rises every day. Sometimes I spend a couple of minutes at a time reading other people's tweets and retweeting some of them and at other times I can spend half an hour to an hour messing about going to the different links and reading stuff on line.

Is it productive or not? Hard to say, because I don't think any of my tweets have translated into direct sales BUT I am building a network of on line contacts some of whom will one day think about buying a Treasure Trail maybe - meantime, I am on the word of mouth marketing mission!

Web Hits

2009-10-06T13:32:00.003+01:00

Our web hits are going up and up - check out the graph!!

A - Z of Treasure Trails

2009-10-06T11:42:00.002+01:00

The things that amuse........

A - Aaron - our fabulous designer!

B - Bewdley - one of the nicest places we have in our catalogue of Trails : http://bit.ly/33OzdR

C is for craft fairs - one of the outlets we use when selling our Trails direct - here is where we plan to go next: http://bit.ly/OFhOn

And D is for David, my wonderful husband who works with me in the business x

E is for Everyone - our Trails really are suitable for all ages and abilities, many are pushchair and wheelchair friendly too!

F is for Friends and Family - our brochure says - do you like playing games with Friends and Family ??!!

G is for the Golden Valley - one of 4 Driving Trails in our catalogue http://bit.ly/vmvdG

H is for Herefordshire, the county we are based in http://bit.ly/40ZBk

I is for Icecream - one of the things you can do along the way is to have one! Local is best :-)

J is for January, the month that Treasure Trails has its annual conference and all the licensees get together! This year in Bournemouth!

K is for Kidderminster - a much nicer place than I first thought - it needs exploring! Use a Trail - http://bit.ly/wiCWJ

L is for Ludlow which is out of our area, we need a new licensee to take on Treasure Trails Shropshire - know anyone? Please RT

M is for Monmouth - which is out of our area, we need a new licensee to take on Treasure Trails South Wales - know anyone? Please RT

N is for Newsletter, Blog, Twitter and all the other marketing stuff I try and do to encourage repeat biz ! http://bit.ly/4dqDK

O is for Organised Events - a Treasure Trails specialism - drawing on my HR background! http://bit.ly/4yyJnF

P is for Personalised Gifts - we do a fab line in personalising the Trails to make them unique to the individual. http://bit.ly/1OvM0a

Q, always a hard one and the best I can think of is Q is for Quirky - all our licensees are quirky, & the quirkiest of the lot is our MD!

R is for Ross on Wye and Redditch - both at the extremities of our patch! http://bit.ly/2jRSBR

S is for Spy Trail - our newest format and the easiest of the lot to write! Try our Malvern Hills one! http://bit.ly/7BN0A

T is easy, its T for Treasure Trails! http://bit.ly/ggtBW

U is for Upside Down - our posters feature an upside down man! Told you about the quirky didn't I !

V = 5 (as in the roman numeral) & the amount U pay 4 a Treasure Trail - just £5 per Trail - gr8 value 4 a day out with friends & family!

W is for wheelchairs 14 of our Trails are written to suit wheelchair users and further 6 are pushchair friendly as well!

X is for Xray (how original), but Megasight, our TT Superhero is so called because of his xray vision - he can see clues, others can't .....

Y is for Youth Hostels - one of the outlets that stock our Trails thanks to the Leominster YHA http://bit.ly/sDqo7

I've decided Z is for Zaycation, what they said everyone would be doing this year in a french accent - & therefore great for TT biz!!

Surveys

2009-10-06T10:08:00.001+01:00

I created a survey and am really pleased with it - have had 8 responses so far - please do it and make my day!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=MtJhb_2bChcNA3wrytmYC_2frw_3d_3d

Thanks!

Statistics

2009-09-30T15:06:00.003+01:00

I love statistics don't you? I find they help drive a business as long as you aren't slavish to them. Anyway, I've been doing our end of months stats and here is a snapshot of where we are against current targets and over last year's numbers:

So far this year we have sold 16% more Trails directly to the public than overall last year and we have sold 9% more over the internet - using the www.treasuretrails.co.uk website.

We have achieved 70% of our annual target and the next three months are our busiest in terms of sales in the run up to Christmas, so there is no reason that I can see why we shouldn't achieve 100% + of our annual sales target.

We have had a steady increase in the number of hits to our website and compared to January of this year, August had 47% more hits than in January! September numbers look as though they might a record for us and that's before the Superhero Challenge drives people into the website - which should start next week when the leaflets and posters are distributed.

Its all looking OK!

The Prince's Trust Superhero Challenge

2009-09-28T13:14:00.002+01:00

So busy with getting stuff done for the Superhero Challenge taking place on November 1st in Worcester that there is no time for anything else, including blog writing!!

The posters are ready to print and the leaflets are organised and the little business cards are almost done, so we can now move onto the next steps which is to ensure the activities are all lined up and the booklet is ready to have the artwork created by our super duper designer - Aaron! If you need any artwork done, then let him know - he is fab at it and we are delighted with all that he has done so far.

Have updated the web page and are now ready for the first lot of cheques to arrive. Take a look : www.treasuretrails.co.uk/trails/worcestershire/theprincestrust/

Quite a mouthful!

No time to stop and pontificate - back soon......

Hit Counter

2009-09-23T11:20:00.002+01:00

Writing a blog is a weird thing to do isn't it when you think about it - why on earth would anyone be interested in the musings of a 50 something, self employed mum of grown up sons?

Seems one or two are though as the hit counter that David installed on the blog site is up to 321 today! A significant number -> 3 2 1 Thunderbirds are go!! But because it is rare to get comments on the blog entries, I really don't know who reads it; whether they read it regularly or if it is one of those that people stumble across, are bored by and stagger on!

Anyway, I've decided to watch the hit counter and see how many hits I get on average per day/week and go from there! But if you do have a comment, then I'd love to hear it! Meantime, 3 2 1 Treasure Trails Are Go!!

Twitter

2009-09-21T15:01:00.002+01:00

I've decided I really like Twitter and we are starting to get some benefit from it.

Successes we have had with Twitter are:

1) Had an opportunity to give a prize to the organisers of the http://www.mumpreneurconference.com/, and an invite from them to send 100 leaflets to go into their goodie bags + our logo will go on their web page soon. I would never have known about them and for the price of a stamp I get all that "free" advertising - fantastic.

2) Had a local hotel contact us recently asking how they can get involved with the Trails - followed up with an email which I now need to follow up with a phone call. To get a hotel contact us rather than the other way round gives me much more confidence that they are interested in what I've got to say/sell!

3) I know more about what Treasure Trails Hampshire is up to than any other area of the TT business as they are the only other part of the Treasure Trails business that uses Twitter.

Small but satisfying.

There are lots of websites giving advice on how to get the best of out of it and what the point of it is, but in a nutshell, I think as a follower it is a way to get bite sized bits of information from an organisation or person you find interesting and as a twitterer you can give interesting snippets of information to your followers, bearing in mind that people buy people! More on this to come.

Treasure Trails Newsletter

2009-09-16T14:39:00.002+01:00

Just finished writing the Treasure Trails newsletter that goes out to all customers that have signed up for it....purpose is to remind them about us and drive them to the website to buy another Trail. Got to keep in mind the purpose! Not sure I achieved that, but anyway - this is what went into it this time:

-------------------------------------------------
Shopping Days 'til Christmas
Amazing how the days and weeks whip past at this time of year in the run up to Christmas isn't it. However fast or slow it comes everyone's thoughts start to turn to what presents they need to send and we'd like to let you know that Treasure Trails make fantastic gifts!

They are good for those hard to buy for people in your life.....husbands, brothers, sons, uncles, grandparents, in-laws, like to cousins, neighbours.....

They are also great as stocking fillers and tree pressies, because they are such a reasonable cost at just £5.00. In our house, £5 is the limit on items that go into the stockings or hang off the tree.

They make a brilliant and unusual secret santa gift because they suit all ages and both sexes!

Finally, they are a fab standby to have in the house ready wrapped for the person you forgot to buy for and who appears with a pressie on Christmas Eve and if you don't use it, then just unwrap it and give yourselves a walk on Boxing Day!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personalised Trails
Thinking about pressies for people, we've created some personalised Trails this year that have gone down exceptionally well with both the givers and receivers and we'd like to quote some of the feedback we've been given.

"I have been extremely impressed with the organisation of the Treasure Trails, Amanda was very helpful and within a couple of days of placing my order a personalised trail came through the post. The photos and information I had given were cleverly woven into the trail and makes a fantastic gift" - Wendy, April 2009, Redditch

"The Trail for my friend has arrived in the post today ~ thank you for turning this around so quickly. I can't wait until Sunday when we give it to him; I just hope that we get to go on the walk with him! Yours has been such a personal and friendly service. It was so good to be able to make suggestions and that you were so kindly tolerant of the changes that were made. I will definitely buy more Trails for friends; they're like Cluedo for grown ups and you get fresh air and exercise too! My thanks to David too .." - Maggie, August 2009, Kidderminster

Its fab, fab, fab and I love it, thanks so much! - Claire, August 2009, Hereford

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Prince's Trust Superhero Challenge
On November 1st, 2009 we are involved in an event in Worcester in aid of the Prince's Trust. It is aimed at primary school children, but all ages will get lots of fun from it and tickets go on sale at the beginning of October!

Not only are there clues to find answers to just like a normal Treasure Trail, but there are activities to do as well - like go karting, wall climbing, rugby and cricket skills, fire hose challenges and mask painting, to name a few!

To secure your ticket, which is £20 for a group of up to 5 people, click the link below to be taken to the coupon which you can download and print on your own printer.

Not too long and not too boring hopefully!

Treasure Trails Website

2009-09-15T10:29:00.002+01:00

Today the plan is to continue work I started yesterday, which is to refresh and update the Treasure Trails Herefordshire and Worcestershire website pages.

I've just had a browse through them and they are in fairly good order, but there are some pages that could do with updating - like the ones where we quote our customers' comments and the ones where we show what articles we've had in the news. In fact, we've had lots of articles published but we only have the ones up to September 08 on the site - can't believe a whole year has passed since we added to those pages!

I also spent a while yesterday adding all the logos of the organisations that are sponsoring the Prince's Trust Superhero Challenge event we are working on and today I need to add the links to their websites. Once that's done, I can email them all and ask them to add links to our site so we can get a flow of traffic and hopefully pick up some sales and increase the awareness of Treasure Trails.

Best get on with it!

Admin - Show - Admin

2009-09-14T15:25:00.003+01:00

Another Monday spent sorting out after a show and generally getting on top of all the admin that piles up when you are out enjoying yourselves!

On Saturday we had a good day at the Droitwich Spa Salt Day. Salt Day celebrates the town’s historic association with salt, which can be traced back to the Iron Age. The Romans knew Droitwich as ‘Salinae’ and they were in Vines Park close to us with their bare legs and full armour marching around importantly!!

We proved the importance of a good pitch too on Saturday because we started off behind the Statue in Vines Park and next to the band stand, with the Guides on one side of us and a lot of nothing on the other side. Three stands up from us was a corner spot which was empty as the exhibitors hadn't turned up and after a couple of hours when we had only sold less than a handful of Trails, the organisers asked us if we would mind moving to the corner spot - which we did and our sales went up from there! In the end we had a really good day and beat our average sales which is always a good thing!!

Sunday, we spent checking on some Trail Trouble. We'd had some feedback from a customer about the Hay on Wye Trail. I quote verbatim "Clue no 17 seemed impossible to find! We looked several times and came to the conclusion that the notice/plaque has been removed and therefore was impossible to find the answer. Might need checking from your pointof view! Great entertainment - a granny, a mum, an aunt and two teenage lads all enjoyed it. Brilliant entertainment." So any excuse to go to Hay and we set off to see if the clue had been moved.... but no, there it was albeit a little overgrown and maybe you had to know it was there, but there it was anyway in all its glory!

Had a minor problem on Sunday though, I knocked my breakfast smoothie over the laptop and consequently the w sticks a bit now... I was lucky though, it could have been more than just a sticky w!!

To Grade for Difficulty or Not !`

2009-09-10T08:58:00.002+01:00

There has been much discussion internally in Treasure Trails this week about whether we should grade the Trails for difficulty or not.

The arguments for include the fact that some areas get a few people responding on their feedback that they found Trails easier/harder than other Trails they’ve done and it’s definitely put them off. It confuses our customers as they don’t have that sense of consistency. But it only surfaces for people that try Trails in different counties. Putting a difficulty rating not only gives the customer some level of comfort that they’re choosing the right Trail (and if you think about it, a defence from criticism ala “well you did choose the difficult one!”) but actually also forces us to develop some consistency between us. This becomes the impetus to get there. We’ve had some Dorset customers who thought the Hampshire Trails were too easy and some of Hampshire's repeat customers love the Trails but want something harder now. A difficulty rating backed up with some simple defined standards solves this very easily. It wouldn't be too difficult to develop some guidelines between us that define what makes Trails difficult/medium or easy. For example, cryptic clues or clues that require prior cultural/educational knowledge should be only set on difficult/extreme/expert trails. We can agree that all between us and then that immediately improves our consistency. It will provide fresh new challenges to our regular customers, who may have done lots of Trails and may start to get a bit jaded.

And the arguments against are that part of our marketing spiel and the TT ethos is that the trails really are suitable for all ages – Devon TT met recently FOUR generations (included Great Grandma!) of one family who had all been out trailing at the same time. We've also had a comment through the Trail rating process recently which said -> "Great entertainment - a granny, a mum, an aunt and two teenage lads all enjoyed it. Brilliant entertainment."

We try to mix the level of difficulty of clues within each Trail, including a few easier clues for kids and to get a novice Trailer started, and some harder ones to provide more of a challenge as well. From the numerous returning customers we have, and from the feedback we receive via the answer submission and directly at shows, we think we’ve got the mix of difficulty about right. People like the fact that they are able to get the right answer - eventually!

So, in conclusion, the feedback rating already proves that everybody’s Trailing experience is different, which makes the rating somewhat meaningless. If the majority give a Trail a rating of between 8 and 10, and then one person gives it a 5, do we rush out and change the Trail? Likewise, we could run into the same problems with levels of difficulty.

There is of course nothing to stop a couple of lines being added in the About The Trail bit in the booklet itself or on the Trail home page, indicating the level of difficulty.

What do you think?

Stourport Carnival

2009-09-04T12:00:00.002+01:00

Off to Stourport Carnival in the morning. The weather forecast is suggesting that it will cloudy and windy tomorrow which is great news because we always do better when its not raining!!

Apparently the carnival includes a big parade with floats and marching bands, an evening river carnival, plus a host of activities and entertainment for the whole family to enjoy over two days!

Stourport itself is "a unique Georgian canal town in the heart of the Severn Valley" and of course Treasure Trails has a really great Trail around the town for just £5.00. Like all our Trails, it can downloaded from the website www.treasuretrails.co.uk or come and find us on Saturday on the carnival field and we'll sell you the booklet.

Hope to see you there!

Other People's Blogs

2009-09-03T10:27:00.002+01:00

Found a blog entry talking about Treasure Trails today which was very heartwarming to see. I do love it that people always seem to have a wonderful day out with friends and family when they do one of the Treasure Trails.

Have a read for yourselves : http://amidesignsjewellery.blogspot.com/2009/09/treasure-trails.html#comment-form

It really is fantastic to get independent views and this one of the best type of testimonials to get because there is nothing in it for her! We also get feedback and comments from customers when they submit their answers onto our website and here is a selection from the last couple of week's comments :

"Excellent trail. Very good for all ages and dogs! With regard to refreshments on route, please be aware that some of the pubs are not open all day"

"Took longer than stated. Everything else great. Looking forward to doing next one"

"Very enjoyable"

"I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was for me one of the best days of my summer holiday! Thank you so much!"

Bargains Work

2009-09-02T11:08:00.002+01:00

Interesting tale.... in today's post was a completed Hereford Trail together with the answer and a cheque for £6 and a request for the Ross Trail. On examination of the Hereford Trail, we realised it was one we had sold at half price ie £2.50 because it was an old version of the Hereford Trail which had "Trail Trouble". In other words, one of the clues was missing and we'd written the answer on the booklet itself and because one of the clues was missing and we didn't want to just chuck the booklet, we made a decision recently to sell them off to cover the printing and prize fund costs.

This lady obviously enjoyed the Hereford Trail so much, she decided to buy the Ross one at full price plus P & P..... so David was right all along, bargains work!!

Christmas Fairs, Markets and Shows

2009-08-30T17:11:00.002+01:00

Spent the last couple of hours searching for shows, fairs, markets and places to sell our Trails in the run up to Christmas. If anyone knows of any that are coming up, I'd love to hear about them. Meantime, look out for where we are going to be by checking our Fairs and Shows page on www.treasuretrails.co.uk/trails/herefordshire/shows/

Castle Lodge Hotel

2009-08-25T16:00:00.002+01:00

Last night we went to the Grand Opening of the Castle Lodge Hotel in Ross on Wye which has been taken over recently by Helen, Steve and Georgina. We were made very welcome and enjoyed meeting up with the mayor and his wife Sue as well as Jane from Visit Herefordshire and the proprietor of a gift shop in Ross called Crows Nest. The hotel has a fab sounding seafood restaurant and I noticed lobster on the menu - looks like a great place to go for a special occasion!

Helen invited us after seeing us talking at the Tourist Information Centre in Ross last March and has kindly taken a stock of our leaflets to display in the hotel foyer - hopefully the word continues to spread and the leaflets attract new customers.

Busy Busy

2009-08-24T14:12:00.003+01:00

Its not that we aren't doing anything to report, its just that we are so busy the blog keeps falling off the end of the To Do List!

The Prince's Trust event that is taking place in November is keeping us the most busy as well as a few bits and pieces of Trail Trouble here and there.... seems there might be an issue in the Hay on Wye Trail and last night we checked on the Ledbury Trail and need to sort out a couple new clues for there as a plaque has disappeared and the Talbot Hotel is covered in scaffolding and the clue is missing off the front of the hotel.

Meantime, we are looking forward to next Monday's Pershore Plum Festival and hope its a sunny day. Sales of the Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart aren't as buoyant as we'd hoped but nevertheless some of them have sold which is great news.

Now, must get on as I've got a newsletter to write and get out to all our customers before the bank holiday weekend!

Treasure Trails on the Telly !

2009-08-12T09:21:00.002+01:00

One of our colleagues has got Treasure Trails on the TV.... this Friday on BBC1 Northern Ireland at 8:30pm or on Sunday evening at 10:30pm. The programme is called Northern Exposure and features Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker and his fiancée - businesswoman and model Danielle Bux - who this summer have been visiting Northern Ireland to uncover hidden gems and give you great ideas for something to do or someplace to visit. One of their great ideas is doing the Treasure Trails Murder Mystery in Armagh. Its fab to have a celebrity endorse the product and well done to Allan in Northern Ireland. We've set our tape ready!

Keeping Up with Stuff

2009-08-10T17:16:00.004+01:00

There is so much to do when running a small business that sometimes its hard to figure out the priorities!

Currently on the list of things to do are:-

Following up with retailers and B and Bs who stock our Trails to see if they need more stock as we go through the summer holidays
Following up with Broadfield Court to see if they have made a decision about going with a bespoke Trail
Creating and preparing for the big Prince's Trust Event we are running in November - have a wonderful Super Hero created - here he is - working name Mega Sight.
Selling direct through All Saints Church and then the Herefordshire Country Show over the last couple of weeks (which is why there has been no blog)!
Preparing for the next set of shows coming up
Listing schools to contact to find out if they are holding Christmas Fairs that we can sell at
Sorting out Trail Trouble in Hereford East - a sign has been broken off, and Trail Trouble in Bromyard - a shop has closed down!
Writing and emailing out another newsletter for customers which I want to get out before the bank holiday
Following up on leads picked up at the shows (including setting up a meeting if possible with the events manager at The Blind College.
and last but not least
Writing interesting blog entries!

Phew - worn out, think I'll have another cup of tea!

Rain Rain Go Away

2009-07-29T08:55:00.002+01:00

Can't believe its still raining. Luckily this week we are selling Trails from the South Chapel of All Saints Church in Hereford High Town and are under cover - its not that warm, but at least its dry!

Sold a few yesterday and picked up an order for a Personalised Trail - someone's hen do in three weeks time, so we need to get cracking on making it just right for them. They are going to plant some of the clues and use some of the established Hereford Murder Mystery clues, so it should end up as a really nice mix of clues and challenges for the six girls that are going to work out who murdered Dr Love!

The new leaflets are working well and we've decided to blow the budget on a new banner as well - which hopefully will arrive in time for the Pershore Plum Festival event on 31st August. The Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart - the Trail we wrote especially for the Pershore Plum Fair - is selling well and we are starting to get answers into the prize draw. The prize is an evening meal for two at the Angel Inn in Pershore High Street - lucky winner!

This weekend we are at the Herefordshire Country Fair - so do drop by and say hi! In fact, if you come and see us as a result of this blog and quote the web address, then we'll give you an exceptional deal on a Trail of your choice from the Worcestershire and Herefordshire catalogue.

The Prince's Trust Super Hero Challenge

2009-07-22T18:33:00.004+01:00

Met up with our man from the Prince's Trust today and agreed the theme for the event due to happen on Sunday, 1st November in Worcester. Theme is Super Heroes - so we are calling the event, The Prince's Trust Super Heroes Challenge! Website is set up now - have a look www.treasuretrails.co.uk/trails/worcestershire/theprincestrust/ and we are working on getting the artwork sorted out for the leaflets, the registration form and of course the Challenge Booklet itself.

Its all very exciting and we are so pleased to be involved in driving it through to a successful conclusion. 10,000 leaflets will be printed publicising the event and to enable people to register to be part of the event, they have to go to our website and give us their email address - more people to send our newsletters to!

We have another meeting on 8th August and hope to have the artwork ready by then and at least one of the activity zones finalised and looking like the finished product.

Got to keep in mind of course we are holding the event in November and it just might rain on it..... but there again, if we were doing it in July we'd have to bear the weather in mind too!!!

Brides and Hen Parties

2009-07-21T15:58:00.003+01:00

Normally I am not great at following through on stuff and quite often don't finish things - but have managed to use my time today to create and finish (!!) a newsletter for brides and organisers of hen parties. If you want a copy of it, let me know and I'll add your email address to the master list! Have put some pics in it too of hen parties we've got involved in recently. Would share them with the blog but can't remember how to upload pictures - will have to check with my IT expert!

White Lilies & Sally Kingston

2009-07-20T10:43:00.004+01:00

I met a very sweet lady yesterday who has just set up in business as a wedding planner. She can provide help with organising a wedding maybe just for consultation or management of the wedding day itself, not necesarily organising the full wedding. If you know of anyone who needs such a service, then get in touch with her via her blog : http://whiteliliesevents.blogspot.com/

I also met a lady called Sally who makes the most fantastic headdresses and corsages - she is waiting to hear from you too! Her website is www.sallykingston.com.

Probably my only venture into wedding fairs this year!

Wedding Fair

2009-07-19T16:13:00.003+01:00

Just got home after spending the day at a wedding fair in Great Malvern. It was a trial for us to see if we could sell the hen party trails and if it would be worth exhibiting at wedding fairs. The jury is out - but had a really nice day meeting all sorts of nice people both stall holders and punters and sold some trails too!

Congratulations

2009-07-18T09:44:00.001+01:00

Congratulations to Poston Mill Park who won the Award for Excellence in Leisure and Tourism. We look forward to selling them some of our Trails for their guests and visitors!

Retail Orders

2009-07-13T12:07:00.003+01:00

Just pulled together two Retail Orders that came in at the end of last week. One is for Harvington Hall; a beautiful moated medieval and Elizabethan manor-house south-east of Kidderminster. They want to stock our Trails in their visitor's shop and their initial order is for 28 Trails. The other is for the Treasure Trails Shop which is opening for 8 weeks for the summer period on a holiday park near St Austell in Cornwall. We are giving them 20 Trails to sell on our behalf. Feels good that we are getting volume orders out.

Princes Trust

2009-07-08T17:25:00.002+01:00

Very exciting day today (and yesterday had some excitement too). Met Mr Marley this morning in the Little Chef just off the Junction 5 of the M5 and talked through his ideas of running a Treasure Hunt in November in Worcester and he has asked us if we'd like to collaborate with him which we would! Will be lots of work, but also potentially lots and lots of publicity which is brilliant. More on this as time goes on.

Meantime, today we are up on the front page of two websites -> http://www.herefordshirehealthyschools.org.uk/resources/parents.html
and
http://www.threelittlepigsgiftshop.co.uk/ where you have to scroll down and click on the Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart

Yesterday, we set up a deal with a B&B on a sale or return basis - their target market are the 50+ and the young exec couples, so our Trails should do well there. Thanks Somerville House!

School Fairs

2009-07-06T13:06:00.003+01:00

We attended two different school fairs at the weekend. Both very enjoyable and completely different! The first one was inside a very upmarket marquee and we shared the space with Smallprint as well as people selling handbags and jewellery and the usual craft stuff. As always Treasure Trails was a little bit different. We had a lovely pitch right next to the cake stand! Always a winner!

The second school we went to we were outside next to the band in our own marquee which as requested, we decorated with the American flags as it was 4th July and the fair had an American theme. We didnt' do quite so well there in terms of one to one sales but we did meet the owner of The Christmas Shop in Bewdley who bought our Bewdley Trail with a view to stocking in her shop. Fingers crossed her partner agrees to stock.

No shows now until the end of July as we concentrate on contacting B&Bs and asking them to stock Trails and/or leaflets for their holiday visitors.

2009-07-02T13:29:00.003+01:00

We are starting work on our summer holiday newsletter to remind our customers that we exist and doing one of our Trails is a great way to spend time with family and friends and won't break the bank either! We really hope we get people to log onto www.treasuretrails.co.uk to make their selection, but of course, they can always phone us instead and we'll post them out.. Treasure Trails Ltd sends out a newsletter about 4 times a year. The one we are sending out over the next few days will contain a quiz as well as news and is celebrating our first birthday as a business as we have been trading now for 12 months!

Look out for it in your email and if you would like a copy and don't think you are on our customer database, then let us know.

Feedback

2009-07-01T14:26:00.001+01:00

"I bought the Great Malvern Trail last year and gave it to some friends for Christmas. They did the Trail recently and told me they really enjoyed it and it was the best Christmas present they received!" - John from Malvern gave us this feedback when we met him at the Bromsgrove Carnival in June 2009

Pershore Plum Festival

2009-06-30T16:37:00.003+01:00

Just back from delivering copies of the newly printed Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart to various outlets in Pershore. There is lots of publicity about them already and watch this space for more! In the meantime, check out these web links.....

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/search/4458969.Plum_celebration_gives_taste_of_town/search4458969.print/search4458969.print/search4458969.print/

http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/search/4458969.Plum_celebration_gives_taste_of_town/

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/search/4461704.Join_in_our_mystery_trail/

If anyone wants to write a story about the Mystery, then get in touch... meantime I wonder who dunnit :-).

Schools Sports Partnership

2009-06-29T08:12:00.003+01:00

What fantastic weather we had at the weekend for the Bromsgrove Carnival and 10K run. Lots and lots of families were out in Sanders Park enjoying the entertainment and the sunshine and we gave away virtually all the leaflets we had with us! Sold lots of Trails too, although more on the Saturday than the Sunday. Made some good contacts including a lady from the School Sports Partnership who took the Kingsland Trail and an old Tenbury Wells Trail to show to her boss and colleagues with a view to getting something going for the local Bromsgrove Schools. She was very enthusiastic, so we will see.

Also met a lady who wants to organise a family get together for her uncle's 50th and thought a personalised set of Trails would make a perfect pressie for him.

And we met a guy who bought our Great Malvern Trail last year and gave it to someone as a gift and told us "it was the best present he had ever given someone, they really really enjoyed it". All very encouraging!

Bed and Breakfasts

2009-06-23T13:37:00.002+01:00

This morning a bed and breakfast owner that we met way back in March phoned to ask for a stock of leaflets! Feels great to receive a call asking for stock, rather than constantly pushing from our end. Anyway, I have agreed to go and see them and talk about various options including writing a bespoke Trail for them, so am delighted with that.

Have also spent the morning looking for a camp site near Bromsgrove as we will be at the Bromsgrove Carnival this weekend and need somewhere to stay. Found one and its all booked and paid for, so fingers crossed for the weather!

Next item on the list is to plot a route which includes as many B and Bs as I can find in the Bromyard area and then go and pay them all a visit and talk about a possible sale or return deal so that we can continue to build AWARENESS of the product and service we provide.

The Three Counties Show

2009-06-22T11:19:00.002+01:00

Wow, what a big show the Three Counties Show is! We had a great time there with a really nice pitch opposite the fire and rescue guys and between a jewellery stand and a crocs stand both manned / owned by great guys who were fun to be around. We spent some money and we made some money - always a good balance! The weather was fine and we only had one or two spots of rain on the Sunday although it was very windy on Friday and Saturday and our rather flimsy marquee held up very well......

We experimented with a couple of things including putting a poster up about the fact that the Trails are wheelchair and pushchair friendly and that worked well with getting people to stop and chat. Instead of putting all the Trails in the spinner in alphabetical order we tried putting them in their Trail types - ie all the Murder Mysteries together, all the Spy Trails together and all the Treasure Maps together and again I was happy with the result - people spent more time browsing the spinner and exclaiming when they saw certain towns, whereas when they were labelled up as Glos Trails or Worcs Trails for example, they only looked at those ones.

Highlights of the weekends was the phone call we received from the Evesham Journal who are doing a piece on our Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart and wanted a photo of us holding a plum pie! The other highlight was the one hours consultancy with a marketing expert (Hannah) from Business Link who brainstormed with us both at the stand on how we could drive Awareness of Treasure Trails because until we have driven Awareness we won't get the volume sales we are looking for. She had some great ideas and once we are over the next couple of very busy weeks, we can start working on a new marketing strategy!

Next stop Bromsgrove Carnival next week - come and see us there!

Garden Festival

2009-06-15T09:39:00.003+01:00

We had a really lovely couple of days at the Garden Festival at Hellens Manor. The sun shone on both days and as we were under cover we stayed cool and didn't burn unlike some of the other stall holders. We had a steady stream of really nice people coming through and met a lady who is now considering taking on the Gloucestershire License; we also met a lady from the Wye Valley Life Magazine who may decide to do a feature on us;we met another couple who thought they would investigate taking the License for Kent and of course we sold some Trails! Some of the other stall holders were fun and we enjoyed especially meeting Clare and her Mum and Dad and friend Linda and wish her lots of luck with her Tea venture. We were very impressed with the Cafe Green's juicer and have plans to get one - maybe there will be some of sale at the Three Counties Show. Another stall holder near us will also be at The Three Counties, so we will renew acquaintance then.

This morning we've had the go ahead from Emma, for the Kingsland School Trail and so need to get down to the printers and deliver their order for 100 Trails. Feedback was that the Trail looked very professional!

The Garden Festival

2009-06-13T07:40:00.001+01:00

Sun is shining and we're all ready for a great day of selling at The Garden Festival in Hellens Manor! Apparently, we are under cover near the composting people and food stalls - sounds like an ideal position. Hopefully lots of people will come and see the show and find our stand and BUY!

Preparing for the next few shows!

2009-06-11T12:13:00.002+01:00

We have 10 show days coming up over the next four weekends and have put in a lots of work to prepare for them and made some investments! We've put in an order for another batch of Trails to be printed and so replenished stocks of our most popular Trails. We've ordered 2,000 of our new leaflets and we've also ordered a couple of t-shirts all of which should hopefully arrive in time for our biggest show - the Three Counties which is next weekend. This weekend we are at Much Marcle and the Garden Festival held in the grounds of Hellens Manor which we are looking forward to.

Have also finalised the Kingsland Trail so it is now ready for testing by our PTA contact, Emma and hopefully the weather will hold and she will get out to it this weekend.

Lots to do, and so little time!

Business Awards Part 2

2009-06-08T12:52:00.002+01:00

Well, the three judges have just left.... we had Peter Hands, the Chairman of Visit Herefordshire, Viv Hudson, MD of the Hotelshop and Linda Smith from the Chamber of Commerce and they were with us for over an hour talking about Treasure Trails and offering their thoughts about how we could continue to expand the business. It was informal and fun and we really enjoyed the discussions. Whether we get to the next stage or not, who knows, we have to wait and see!

Also today we got a call from a gentleman wanting to buy our Bewdley Trail - he heard about the Trails on local BBC Hereford and Worcester Radio and so we've had a listen and I came across ok I think.... feedback from a friend was that I came across very professionally but fun and approachable as well. Now we have to work out how to capture it, as it is only available on line for another 3 days!

Business Awards

2009-06-04T11:31:00.003+01:00

We heard this morning that we didn't get short listed for the most promising new business award, but we are assuming that is because we are on the short list of 3 for the award for excellence in leisure and tourism. We've been given the names of the judges who are coming on Monday and we know one of them and know that he is supportive of us and our product, so fingers crossed.

We have sent the proposal through for a bespoke Trail at Broadfield Court and will start the discussions/negotiations in a week or two with the manager there.

We are ready to have Kingsland independently tested and Emma has agreed to do it that for us. And we've completed the artwork for our new leaflet. On Monday, we have a big print order going through with the stock of 7 of our Trails needed to be replenished and the Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart - the bespoke Trail written for the Pershore Plum Festival also ready for printing - so its all go!!

Chores in the Sunshine!

2009-06-02T18:16:00.002+01:00

I had three chores to do today and all they all involved being out and about in the sunshine! This life is really good especially when we call it work! I had to drop off some Trails to the shop in Hampton Court Castle - they are going to see how well they sell and then hopefully will order some more! I had to go to Tenbury Wells to sort out some Trail Trouble - the answer to clue number 2 was on a sign high up on the wall of a building, but the sign has come down, we think it was vandalised and so I had to take some photos of other signs nearby and rewrite clue 2. Finally, I had to make my way to Kingsland and test the Trail that David has written (all in rhyme) and make sure that the clues worked and the directions were clear. The Trail is a really nice one with lots of picture clues and I think the families of Kingsland will have a lot of fun with it.

Radio Interview

2009-05-30T13:05:00.002+01:00

Last Thursday proved great fun - I left home and drove to Bromsgrove to meet up with a few members of the Creative Women group. When I was only a few miles from my destination, I realised the car needed oil - not a problem, I thought, buy some oil, open the bonnet and put it in! Easier said than done as I couldn't get the bonnet open and was worrying about being late..... so I drove to my destination and on arrival, said I had a problem and that I needed to call the AA. Sue, one of the founders of the group came to my rescue and managed to open the bonnet (just like that!) but then couldn't get the oil cap off......we decided to let it all cool down and maybe it would contract!

It was time to do the interviews. It was such entertainment listening to the two ladies who had their interviews before me and watching them trying to get it all right so that it could be edited later...for example, the interviewer, Max, asked a question and in answering it, we were supposed to change the question into a statement - he would say "What do you do?" and rather than say, "I make Treasure Hunts, I had to say - "What I do is to make Treasure Hunts..... ". when it was my turn I had little difficulty in telling him all about Treasure Trails and the product and business that we have created as I am so used to doing the pitch at shows and fairs..... what will be so interesting is to hear what he does with it!

Anyway, once all that was over, it was back to the problem of the car! We (Sue) finally managed to get the cap off and I am ashamed to say the dipstick was dry! In went a litre of oil and off I went to get some more and drive back home again, thanking my lucky stars that the oil light had alerted me to the problem!

Will let you all know the date of when Treasure Trails Herefordshire and Worcestershire gets featured on the radio!

Shortlisted for an Award

2009-05-27T09:48:00.003+01:00

Fantastic news to report this morning. We have just heard we've been short listed for the Hereford Chamber of Commerce Award for Excellence in Leisure and Tourism! There are only three businesses in the short list, so we are naturally delighted. The awards ceremony is on 17th July and we've been urged to get our tickets soon! On 8th June we get a visit from the three judges for a chat about the business and to convince them that the gold award should be ours!

Can't wait to shout about it all.... think I'll start by telling Andrew Easton tomorrow as part of the interview on the radio that he is doing with me.

Even if we don't get the gold or silver, the fact that we've been short listed I think is excellent and we can start to put that on our Trails. Must go now and look out for a jpg of our logo and a picture or two to send through to the Chamber of Commerce for their news bulletin.

Admin

2009-05-26T12:41:00.002+01:00

Its amazing how much admin is necessary when running a business! I am having a catch up day on all the little bits of paper that have piled up on my desk! There are various shows that we are attending in the future that I need to put links on our website to their website; there are personalised Trails to complete and bespoke Trails that need finalising; there is the wash-up to do after our day in the Maylord Centre; money to account for & sales to record; equipment to put away until next time etc. We need to make some decisions about where to advertise to reach people before the summer holidays as well and its a toss up between Primary Times and the Hereford Times. I also need to write a proposal for someone who wants our Trails to help them with fund raising for ChildReach. I need to find a cheap B&B for when we do the Bromsgrove Carnival to save us travelling back and forth as it is a two day gig and I need to choose the music for the radio show that I am featuring in soon! See what I mean - so much to do and so little time! Best get on with it! Meantime, hopefully, as its now half term all our customers have been onto www.treasuretrails.co.uk and chosen a Trail to do in the nice weather........

Kingsland

2009-05-22T08:26:00.002+01:00

We've just been picked by a local PTA to create a Challenge for their parents/families to raise some money for the school. We are delighted to be associated with the school and hope that by creating the Challenge for them we can work with them to create a Trail for the school itself in the grounds along the same lines as has been done recently in Devon. Can't wait for the opportunity. Meantime, they want 100 booklets, so we need to get cracking!

Its been a busy week one way or another as we are also in the process of creating a 12 page booklet for 18 hens that want to see the sights of Hereford and we are also preparing several of our Trails for reprinting as we've run out of stock and need to be prepared for the Three Counties.

Tomorrow we have a stand at the Maylord Centre - the shopping centre in Hereford - and as it is the start of half term, hopefully we will sell lots of Trails! Weather forecast is good for the weekend and of course that always helps with the on-line sales too.

Local Radio

2009-05-18T17:03:00.003+01:00

Got some very exciting news today - our local radio has asked the Creative Woman group - see blog entry below - to bring together a small group of women to showcase their businesses that they can air over a week - apparently, they want the individuals to talk about what they do and their products and choose a piece of music, saying why they chose it. This will then go out on the Andrew Easton Show during a lunchtime. Creative Women have asked me to involved. Wonder what I should chose music wise - would be great to find something that was relevant to Treasure Trails! Any suggestions greatly appreciated..... will let everyone know the date of broadcast assuming I get that far.

Hereford Spy

2009-05-17T13:59:00.004+01:00

We are running out of stock and have decided to try out a new local printer. We need more of the Hereford East Trail amongst others and we have decided to rename it Hereford Spy. We don't think "Hereford East" sounds especially interesting and we think that Hereford Spy might be a more attractive name. If you've got an opinion, do let us know!

Every time we do a new print run there is always something to change in the Trails. This time, we are adding in the 2008 Silver Award that Devon won for their customer service. Treasure Trails has won two other awards as well:

Gold Winner of Best Leisure Pursuit in Cornwall in 2006!
Highly Commended for Best Activity Provider in Devon in 2007!

Treasure Trails Herefordshire and Worcestershire have entered the local Chamber of Commerce business awards and it would be fantastic if we were short listed and eventually won something too! Watch this space......