Twitter Press Release

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...

..... 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

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

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

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!

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

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.