Children visited the Heritage Centre on Friday, 2nd June for an activity day and made 'fairy and goblin mobiles'. In the top picture mum, Belinda Marshall de Silver and her son, Tobias can be seen with his mobile and in the bottom picture, Lucy Mince, Lucy Drew-White and Lydia Russell with their own works.

Following last week's report that no musical entertainment took place at the Art and Craft Market on Bank Holiday Monday it is nice to see that belly dancers helped to attract people to the monthly Farmers' Market, held on Friday, 2nd June. I understand that some form of entertainment is going to be provided during future 'Farmers' Markets' to make them more attractive and to promote business to the markets.

There are just a couple of very rushed snap shots below as I was actually on my way to somewhere else and just happened to see the dancers while passing.

Ross-in-Bloom sent in the following report about the Bank Holiday Monday Charity and Craft Market:

Despite the threat of bad weather, Bank Holiday Monday proved to be excellent for the Charity and Craft stalls, which turned up for the final Ross-in-Bloom Market Day. There were only a couple of storms - one at midday and one whilst the stallholders were packing up.

Everyone enjoyed themselves - traders, buyers and visitors alike, with good steady trade taking place all day. Many of the visitors were those who had come to Ross, seen an event taking place in the Market Place and decided to stop rather than just drive through.

This was the last market of its kind to be held at the Market House by Ross-in-Bloom. This is due to complaints about noise and food being available during such events from a hand full of traders near to the Market House. It has been decided that the organizers can no longer put up with this although they are trying to do their best for the town, and will instead use their time on doing other things for themselves. Following statements from people that Ross-in-Bloom is itself cancelled for this year, the committee would like to stress it is only the Regional Competition that will not be taking place. This is the day when the Heart of England Judges come to Ross in July, look around the town and award a Certificate (Gold last year). This is cancelled due to the lack of volunteers coming forward to give a few hours of their time towards the paperwork and organization that is needed for this visit.

The Local Competitions will still be taking place. This year the preliminary short listing for judging will start as usual during the last week on June, with all the competitions being judged in July, August and September.

A full diary of events for Ross-in-Bloom judging times will appear in the press next week. Everyone is reminded that entry to most of the competitions is automatic. Nominations and entry forms are only needed for the Retired, Children, Secret Garden, Best Street and Window Competitions. Entry forms will also be sent out this month to previous participants in some of the competitions and will also be available at the Heritage Centre shortly.

Last years winners are reminded Ross-in-Bloom will need their cups a trophies returned please to the Heritage Centre for display during July and August.

This year, a 'Summer Spectacular' will be taking place on the Rope Walk site which previously hosted Ross International Festival. (Full details of which can be found by clicking here.)

Wyenot News has tickets to each of the three 'Summer Spectacular' concerts, which would normally cost £35 per pair to give away. Six readers will win a pair of tickets to one of the shows. If you and a partner would like a chance to go to one of the concerts for free, all you need do is email the answers to the following questions. Entrants to this competition must be aged 18 years or over. All of the answers can be easily looked up in back issues of Wyenot News.

What type of mammals were photographed swimming in the River Wye at Wilton earlier this year:

a: hump back whales?
b: beavers?
c: otters?

What is the surname of June and Rex, the couple who monitor Ross-on-Wye Weather Station:

a: Swallow?
b: Sparrow?
c: Peregrine Falcon?

TV presenter, Chris Tarrant recently visited the White Lion Inn and Broome Farm. What is the first name of his wife:

a: Enid?
b: Ingrid?
c: Tracy?

Which famous historical character who died 201 years ago once visited Ross-on-Wye?

a: Ludwig Van Beethoven?
b: King Cnut?
c: Admiral Lord Nelson?

Please click here to email your answers. (Wyenot News is absolutely 100% against spam, so your email address will not be harvested, passed on or added to any mailing lists.) A draw from entries received will take place at a venue to be announced on Saturday, July 29th at 5:30 pm and a list of winners will be published in the following week's Wyenot News. Please state your name and postal address (where you want the tickets sent), along with your first and second choice of concert. Winning tickets are subject to availability. First names drawn will have the first choice of concert.

These concerts are not arranged by Wyenot News and tickets are distributed in good faith. Wyenot News will not accept responsibility for any cancellation or postponement of concerts. Wyenot News will not accept telephone entries to the competition. No correspondence will be entered into regarding this competition. Those wishing to purchase tickets should contact the organizers of the events at www.summersoundsspectacular.com.

Every day during the month of May 2006, an average 1,107 viewers looked at 3,630 pages of Wyenot.com, a figure approaching double that of the same period last year.

The most popular pages on the site were the 'Home' page, followed by 'Accommodation' followed by 'Wyenot News'.

The White Lion Inn received an average 2 enquiries per day as a result of their advertising page on the site. Judging by the 'pages visited' statistics, others did equally as well, if not better but the White Lion Inn actually report back to me regularly. The White Lion page was the 22nd most visited page on Wyenot.com during the month.

The most common search string typed into 'Google' bringing visitors to Wyenot.com was 'ross on wye' and similar variations. The second most popular was 'medieval entertainment' and similar. The most amusing was 'geoff jones testicle'. Other very popular search strings were: symonds yat, b&b, Wye valley, much marcle and goodrich castle.

Approximately one third of the web site's visitors arrived from people using search engines. The other two thirds were direct requests, coming from repeat visitors and email referrals - those hearing about the site and passing it on. To me, this is excellent news because it means that people find the site interesting enough to make return visits and tell their friends, without my prompting them to do so.

On the whole, working on the content of the web site rather than going out selling expensive advertising on a less than satisfactory web site boasting 'hits' statistics has paid off in the long run. As you can see from the table below, the site had well over half a million 'hits' during the month of May, but that figure only actually equated to 112 thousand pages being viewed by 34 thousand people. At a little over 8,500 unique readers per week, this is still a reasonable circulation figure for a small market town news web site!

If you have a local news item or story of local interest which you would like to appear on Wyenot News you are very welcome to submit it by email, telephone or by post.

Please advise as early as possible if you would like me to photograph your local event so that I can put it in my diary. This service is offered strictly on a first come, first served basis.

Many Wyenot News photographs appear in various local newspapers and magazines. This does not imply that Wyenot News or any other part of this web site belongs to those publications. Wyenot News is a totally independent news magazine.

Contacting Wyenot News:

Email: please click here.

Telephone: 01989 763217 - Mobile: 0779 683 4077

Postal address: Wyenot News, 1, Hillview Road, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. HR9 7EY

Although it is fine to submit if you are submitting an event taking place in a pub / shop / restaurant etc., please make sure that your story does have real news value and is not simply an advertisement for your business. It would be unfair to those who support Wyenot.com and Wyenot News by advertising to publish blatant advertisements disguised as editorial material.