2012 Dates for your Walking Diary

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Ross-on-Wye Walking Festival

Organized by Walkers Are Welcome

28th to 30th September 2012

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CLICK HERE for details of the planned walks and to book your place.

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Herefordshire Walking Festival

Organized by Herefordshire Council.

16th - 24th June 2012

For more information visit the Herefordshire Local Council Website 

or CLICK HERE

Great news for walkers – those dreaded stiles could soon become a thing of the past on part of the Wye Valley Walk. After a long day out rambling, climbing the last few stiles to reach home can really be exhausting. The Walkers are Welcome Group is delighted to announce the first phase of their new project to improve the local footpath network ‘Smiles without Stiles’. This is good news for everybody but especially for older walkers and those with mobility problems. 

The Group  has secured a grant from the Severn Waste Environmental Fund that will enable it to commence work on the first phase of ‘Smiles without Stiles’. During the next 6-9 months it is planned to replace upto 18 stiles with gates on the section of the Wye Valley Walk between Ross and Welsh Bicknor. The Severn Waste Environmental Fund is a community and environmental grants scheme covering the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Grants are provided to projects which fall within the criteria of the Landfill Communities Fund including the provision and maintenance of public amenities and parks.

Feedback from visitors to the three Walking Festivals has consistently included comments that the relatively large number of stiles on local footpaths is a deterrent to older walkers and to those with mobility problems, a view shared by members of local walking groups. Some stiles on local footpaths have been replaced by gates by Parish Councils and by Amey Herefordshire on an ad hoc basis in recent years. This grant will enable the Group to focus resources on an important section of a popular long-distance trail, the Wye Valley Walk, that contains 18 stiles in a little over 8 miles. Installation of the gates will be carried out partly by volunteers such as the Bridstow Footpath Volunteers  but mostly by EnviroAbility, the Ross-based environmental charity which already carries out footpath maintenance work for Amey Herefordshire and various Parish Councils. It is hoped that EnviroAbility will also be able to manufacture some of the gates thus providing further opportunities for its enthusiastic workforce. Agreement has already been reached with two local farmers and six of the gates will be installed early in the New Year.

With further support from the Wye Valley AONB and Amey Herefordshire the Group will be working with all its partners to also improve the footpaths from Wilton to Kerne Bridge. The Bridstow Footpath Volunteers have already replaced all the stiles from Wilton Bridge south to the parish boundary. During 2012 work will continue to both replace stiles and to improve the surface of the footpath in a couple of difficult locations. Success with both projects will enable a stile-free circular walk to be created that will prove attractive to visitors and local walkers alike.

"My first trip to Ross and the Walking Festival was by chance.  I found the website and it looked like just what I was after.  After two Festivals in Ross I'm looking forward to the next one!  The beautiful countryside, the efficient organization and the many friendly walkers I've met will bring me back in the future."  

GEORGE WESTLUND,
DES PLAINES, ILLINOIS, USA

With a programme of 12 walks, from Saturday 30^th September to Sunday 2^nd October, a booking level of 76% of maximum capacity and the best weather of the summer, the third Ross Walking Festival was a guaranteed success.

The Festival continues to grow in popularity and brought more visitors to Ross than ever. The first Festival in 2009 just after Ross had gained accreditation as a Walkers are Welcome town, produced 90 bookings. Last year was even better with 145 and 2011 topped the poll with a whopping 219. Chairman of the organizing committee, Sam Phillips said, “After last year’s Festival we thought we might just hit the 200 mark. To get 219 was fantastic. We cannot thank our walks leaders and our sponsors enough. Ross is really beginning to establish itself on the walking map”. 

One of the primary objectives of the Walkers are Welcome movement and the Festival is to encourage visitors into Ross to walk, stay overnight and to eat, drink and spend in the town. This year’s event was certainly successful in doing this with visitors, many of whom stayed for 3 nights, from Brierley Hill, Kenilworth, Weymouth, Guildford, Bridgend, High Wycombe, Merseyside, Shirley (West Midlands), Crickhowell, Liverpool, Solihull, Ludlow and Chicago. Together with a German student currently living locally and a family visitor from Montreal. 21 visitors from Yatton, near Weston-super-Mare, partially filled one of the local hotels. 

The walks programme was interesting and varied and the two walking clubs in the town, Ross Ramblers and the Ross Walking Group, worked well together to lead them with help from the Forest of Dean Ramblers. Most visitors commented favourably on the huge fund of local knowledge and expertise as well as many amusing anecdotes displayed by the walks leaders. The featured walk was the Three Castles Walk, a 19-mile epic that was split into two, with 11 miles covered on Saturday and the remaining 8 on Sunday. These walks were fully booked six weeks before the Festival and the Market House Visitor information Centre was still receiving enquiries right up to the Friday evening. 

A key aspect this year was the theme of food and drink. Nationally the Walkers are Welcome movement has allied itself with the British Food Fortnight. This was set up to revitalise the countryside in the wake of the Foot and Mouth epidemic of 2001 by promoting British food and drink. Three of the walks in our Festival included an element of food and drink. There were two cream tea walks where walkers enjoyed the best of local produce with local scones, cream and jam. The walk at Much Marcle also called in at Hall Court where an informal cider tasting on the front lawn took the place of the normal mid-morning coffee stop. This resulted in walkers returning later in the day to buy cider and free-range eggs. 

As well as food and drink the visitors enjoyed the magnificent scenery around Ross. The river featured in one walk when the walkers went for a cruise at Symonds Yat. Another walk ventured into the Forest of Dean at Newland and Redbrook. Another walk took advantage of the local bus service. 22 walkers used a Stagecoach bus to get to the start of the walk, and then walked back to Ross. 

The event succeeded because of the hard work of the organizing committee and the staff at the Market House Visitor information Centre who, after a difficult start due to the reorganisations received much praise from the walkers for making the booking process very easy. A special word of thanks should go to the many businesses that sponsored the start-up of the local Walkers are Welcome group. This year’s festival was helped immeasurably by the support of the Ross Hoteliers Association, PGL Travel and the Wye Valley Brewery. 

The Ross Walking Festival is about much more than just walking. It is intended to encourage visitors to come to Ross to enjoy not only the wonderful walking in the area but to enjoy Ross, it’s people and the facilities on offer.
The organizing committee is already working on next year’s festival. This will be held from 28^th to 30^th September 2012 though it is possible that the start date may be 27^th September. A “brainstorming” meeting was held in October where ideas for next year, including a decision on the extra day, were pooled.

Look out for an announcement, shortly, about another significant event in addition to the festival to be organized by the local Walkers are Welcome committee during 2012. 

NEW LOGO FOR

ROSS-ON-WYE

Press Release

With walking becoming an ever more popular form of recreation and exercise for both dogs and their owners Ben is confident his new publication will enable both to enjoy further the beautiful countryside around Ross. He is keen to stress that owners need to be responsible when taking their pets into the countryside, taking extra care when around livestock or wildlife and being conscientious about cleaning up any dog mess,

Ben’s booklet is now available from the Ross-on-Wye Tourist Information Centre at a price of £3

The latest leaflet produced by the Group is now available. Hand-drawn by local cartographer Geoff Gwatkin this is a large map of the wider Ross area showing the routes of the major footpaths available to walkers. Generously sponsored by the Wye Valley Brewery the map shows the location of the Brewery’s outlets in the area as well as the Bus Stops featured in the Group’s earlier publication, Bus Walks. The reverse of the map contains useful information about the Wye Valley Walk, the Herefordshire Trail and the Ross Round together with background information about the Wye valley AONB’s ‘Overlooking the Wye’ project and its three sites around Ross. The map is available from the Ross Tourist Information Centre at a price of £1.50.

The Group has recently secured the approval of Amey Herefordshire for the installation of improved yellow waymarkers on the major footpaths leading into Ross. Many of the local footpath signs merely indicate the presence of a public footpath without giving an indication of where the footpath goes. It is hoped that the new waymarkers will be the first step in a longer-term project to improve signage generally. It is planned to carry out the work during the winter with the work being carried out by members of the Ross Ramblers who have been trained by Amey (or Jarvis) to carry out light maintenance on footpaths.  

The Ross-on-Wye Group of the Ramblers Association and the Ross Walkers are Welcome Group are delighted to announce that the Ross Buggy Route is almost complete. The final stage, the construction of a ramp alongside Ashfield Park Primary School, is well underway and should be finished within the next few days.
The Ross Buggy Route was conceived four years ago as a joint project between the Ross Ramblers and the Ryefield Centre’s Leisure Link Club. It has taken a lot of hard work, in cooperation with Herefordshire Council’s Rights of Way Department to bring the project to fruition.

Phase one of the route, a two mile section running along the riverside and through the town, was opened by the then Mayor, Councillor John Davies, in June 2008. This section of the route involved the construction of a ramp alongside the steps on the riverside, outside the Hope and Anchor Inn.

The new ramp becomes part of the much-loved John Kyrle Walk and replaces the steep steps where the walk drops into the lane outside Ashfield Park School. Its completion will mean that the full four miles of the Buggy Route can be completed without negotiating any steps or kerbs. The ramp has been funded by the Wye Valley AONB as part of a cooperative venture between Herefordshire Council and the AONB to improve access and safety along the section of the John Kyrle Walk that runs along the cliffs overlooking the cricket and rugby pitches.