Upon visiting Ross Heritage Centre on Saturday afternoon, we found Mary busily preparing for a special exhibition that will open at the centre on Friday, 1st February. The exhibition is called Health Care in the Community and covers all aspects of health care facilities that have been available in Ross from the 14th century to the present day. There will be lots of interesting old photographs and documents on display, which local people have kindly loaned and we will definitely be going along once the exhibition is fully up and running.

For those of you that haven't visited the Heritage Centre yet, we recommend that you do. There is always something going on, including activity days for children during the school holidays and Mary and her team are always happy to help with information where they can (and Mary usually can!) There is an extra facility at Ross Heritage Centre now too. All of the back issues of WNTV News can be viewed on high quality DVD, with the latest editions arriving at the centre on each Friday following publication. Thank you Mary.

Only the top photo in this week's nature watch is my own. I shot the half moon whilst filming the flood water at night on Sunday. The photo was taken as a still photograph with a Sony, High Definition movie camera plus Sony telephoto lens.

The great shot of a stag, camouflaged in the shrubbery below was taken by Derek Williams of E&I Williams, whilst he was walking in the woods by his Doward home.

Thanks to Mike Arnison for sending in two more of his always brilliant shots. One of a woodpecker, the other of a deer in the Forest of Dean.

With lots of news things going on and with having to get back to the White Lion, we were not able to stay for long at the Prince of Wales on Saturday evening but both Tina and I enjoyed the bits we were able to see (and film for WNTV). Our old friend, Simon Smith performed with the new line-up of his band, 'Switch', bringing along Tim Prince and his band.

Tim Prince, who is soon to be touring the USA with great American singer/songwriter, Lee Tyler Post, a tour which begins with a gig at 'Wicked Willy's' in New York, performed a great acoustic set, along with Sophie Edwards on vocals and Chris Gore on guitar.

Switch are progressing very nicely and are beginning to incorporate a lot more of their own, very good material now. We have known Simon for many years now, since he was about 16 and playing with band Chill2Thrill. It's been good to see you grow over the years Simon. I think you will do well with Steve and Sam. Hopefully we'll see you at the Prince again soon.

EnviroAbility, the local town owned company involved in numerous local projects including the Re-Box kerb collection scheme, the Book Swap Shop in Cantilupe Road, Green Nappies, Ross Shop Mobility, are gearing-up expand their operations with more projects in and around Ross town during 2008.

Antony Lowther, chairman of EnviroAbility officially welcomed Dennis Humble back to EnviroAbility with the presentation of a new Re-Box tee shirt at the Corn Exchange on Wednesday evening, 16th January. Antony said, 'There are now more than 10 projects being successfully run in partnership with the Council and other local and commercial organizations around town. We will not rest on our laurels as we are aware that there is still much work to be done and in order to enable this we have been very fortunate to be able to tempt the founder of EnviroAbility, Dennis Humble, to come back to Ross and support the new push.'

Dennis' inspirational leadership led to the setting up of Ryefield Projects 14 years ago, from which EnviroAbility evolved. Its original objective was to provide opportunities for users of the Ryefield Day Centre to employ their skills and energy for the benefit of the community. The group and their work have been recognized by numerous awards, the most prominent being the Beacon Award, known as the charity equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

A meeting was held in the Corn Exchange with several local groups to announce the return of Dennis to work in Ross. The group then went on to discuss local issues, and suggestions were made as to how to improve EnviroAbility's current operations as well as how to co-operate better in the future.

Martin Neicho, Manager off EnviroAbility commented, 'Dennis returning is a great opportunity to develop ideas already on the drawing board as well as new ones. If you have any innovative suggestions for new projects that would benefit the town we would like to hear from you, please give us a call on 01989 760919 or email us at: info@enviroability.org.uk. Also, Dennis Humble will be working from the Scout and Guide HQ in the near future and if anyone would like to pop in to discuss anything with him, he will be pleased to see you.'

In difficult wet and windy conditions Ross battled hard on Saturday and came away from Dursley with a deserved draw, extending their league unbeaten run back to the first week of November.

Dursley won the toss and decided to play with the conditions. The Dursley pitch is elevated, which ensured that it survived the deluge of the previous week. However, for most of the match it rained and combined with a fierce wind it did make the encounter a game of two halves.

With the conditions in Dursley's favour, the first half was played out in Ross territory and both forwards and backs had to work tirelessly in defence to keep a lively Dursley side out. From 1-15 Ross defended not only bravely, but cleverly.

Dursley looked to move the ball quickly from the breakdown, but Ross countered this by committing only the minimum players to the rucks, organizing themselves quickly in defence thus enabling them to snuff out Dursley's attacks. When the half time whistle went Dursley only had one successful penalty for all their territorial advantage. At the half time break Ross knew that if they could achieve the same amount of territory that Dursley had achieved in the first half then the game was theirs for the taking.

After a shaky start to the second half, Ross began to assert control. They began to make a mess of the Dursley scrum, with the front row of Tara Barnett, Wayne Williams and Matt Redman turning over ball on numerous occasions. With this possession, the Ross pack were able to dominate, with Ashley Nelms, TC Leech and captain Tim Hanks bashing holes in the Dursley defence.

However, with conditions continuing to deteriorate, Ross were not able to develop enough phases of play to break down a stubborn Dursley defence. Chris Gage did convert a penalty after 60 minutes to bring Ross level 3-3. Both forwards and backs did all they could during the last 10 minutes to break Dursley down. However Dursley held firm.

With the last kick off the game Ross did have an opportunity to snatch a victory, but Chris Gages 50 metre penalty attempt went wide to the right and the ref blew bringing an absorbing contest to a close. The Ross man of the match was Tim Hanks for his bullocking runs with ball in hand.

Ross play Brockworth next Saturday at the Sports Centre. Kick off is at 2.30pm.

Ross-on-Wye Weather Station is located by the tennis courts and bowling green at 'Crossfields' and is one of the important stations around the country which regularly sends data to the Meteorological Office. This is why Ross-on-Wye is sometimes mentioned on the BBC weather reports. It is currently still a manually monitored station and readings are taken twice per day by husband and wife team, June and Rex Swallow.

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