Church Stretton Area Tourism Group
Church Stretton Area Tourism Group
Home page | Events | Publications | Signage & maps
Railway | Parking & roads | Benches & Planters | Pride of place |
CHURCH STRETTON AREA TOURISM GROUP
Invitation to Where to Stay brochure launch.
Spring Newsletter
ALL CHANGE FOR TOURISM GROUP
The Church Stretton Area Tourism Group elected a whole new Committee at its sixth Annual General Meeting on Thursday 18th December, when its founding Chairman, John Woolmer and his Committee stepped down after five highly successful years. The meeting also provided the opportunity for the incoming Chairman to spell out how the Group intends to preserve and build on the strong foundations laid, involving many more tourism businesses themselves in the process.
Before wishing every success to the new Committee, John spoke with justifiable pride about the many achievements of the Group, recording his thanks to all the many volunteers who had supported him, but, above all, to his long serving Committee members, Andrew Chapman, Eileen Woolmer and, previously, Eileen Roberts.
“With the help of many tourism businesses, the Group has launched the Food Fayre, Walking Festival and Ale Trail, followed by the very successful Pride of Place, Station Gardens and Plastic Bag Free initiatives, still running strongly. The Chamber of Trade will launch a new initiative, ‘The Stretton Summer Festival’ on 20th June 2009 and will liaise wih the Tourism Group and others to ensure success of the event. The Tourism Group also helped to found the Sustainable Tourism Network(STN) bringing together local councils with the local Chamber of Trade, the National Trust, AONB and Stretton Climate Care.
However, perhaps the greatest success of the Group has been in securing the accolade of being the first Walkers are Welcome town in the Midlands. This has given the town its deserved national profile as a premier walking destination. That profile will be further enhanced next October when the town will host the third annual national Walkers are Welcome conference, providing the ideal opportunity to showcase the attractions of the town and surrounding Shropshire Hills.
Town Mayor Bob Welch paid tribute to the tremendous contribution that John Woolmer and his volunteers have made to restoring the economic well-being of the area after the devastating effects of the foot and mouth disease in 2002.
Alan Garner was elected as the new Chairman, Barbara Vickery as secretary and Trevor Halsey as treasurer, with Anne Oakes Jones, Lee Chapman and other project organisers on the Committee.
Alan acknowledged John’s great legacy of achievement on which he pledged to build with the support of others. His foremost priority is to involve many more tourism providers in the Group’s work by:
a) building self-help networking between providers, creating a forum for the exchange of views, information and issues of common concern;
b) contributing to the implementation of the comprehensive STN sustainable tourism strategy;
c) linking with all tourism bodies, nationally and locally, and ensuring that the tourism industry is well represented at all level of government;
d) providing the natural home as fund managers and support body for the Group’s current projects and initiating other such ventures in future.
The next event, open to all tourism businesses, is on 27th January 2009 when ideas will be canvassed as to how best to progress the self-help networking, skill-building and collective marketing of local tourism, followed by a social get-together in Cardingmill Valley Pavilion. This will be followed, just before Easter, with the re-launching of the updated highly successful marketing booklet: Where to Stay, Eat, Shop and What to Do, where leaflets and other information on the coming year’s tourism activities can also be exchanged. Supplies of the Church Stretton Events Calendar for 2009 are already available free of charge at the Church Stretton Visitor Information Centre.
More information is available from:
Alan Garner, Chairman,
Church Stretton Area Tourism Group
01694 723600 alangarner@wsol.co.uk
-----------------------
Group Activities in 2008 click here
NEWS February 2008
Church Stretton is to become the first Walkers are Welcome town in the Midlands. Click Here for more information
In the beginning: The Church Stretton Area Tourism Group is a voluntary organisation set up to:
-
improve the Church Stretton area tourism infrastructure and facilitate tourism within the area
-
liaise with other towns and groups
-
maintain the character of the town
-
organise cleaning and litter-picking activities.
Work to Aid Tourism
Our guiding belief is that if we can help residents to be justifiably proud of a neat, tidy and efficient town, especially one in such a magnificent setting as ours, then tourists and visitors will also enjoy visiting, shopping and staying here. To this end our stalwart Pride of Place team works hard to sweep pavements and gutters, to litter pick, paint and tidy our main streets, car parks and shop fronts almost every month - and especially before public events.
Our much improved tourism infrastructure now has welcome signs, town and area maps, an Information Centre that is open all year round, more finger posts, new town guides and booklets, floral displays, a town livery and attempts to boost the markets in the Square. A significant improvement has been the opening and staffing of the Visitor Information Centre by SCC, & the improved signage to it that we produced with help from the Library Service. The railway station, once so forlorn and sad-looking, has now been brightened up, tidied and planted; and we have a new superloo being built on our main car park and a new bus shelter planned there as well, as well as the old conveniences in Lutwyche Road.
Very few of these achievements would have been possible without the help and support of our councils, the Town Partnership, the National Trust and Shropshire Hills AONB, and – of course – our loyal and hard-working volunteers. We are extremely grateful to them all!
Please leave us your comments or sign our guestbook. 
|
