The past two weeks have found me feeling quite miserable. People see what they want to see. They believe what they want to believe. They read selectively, so that they read what they want to read.

My 'Tina Walked The Dog' comment in this blog and my post on facebook at the time (since deleted) was a joke. Yes, it was a JOKE. Nothing more. I do not believe that aliens have ever visited the planet Earth and I do not believe they are ever likely to. That article was a joke. I saw the lights in the sky, I filmed them, I joked about them with Tina at the time and I mentioned them on facebook but I was aware throughout that they were only there because somebody, maybe somebody with a sense of humour, maybe somebody celebrating the football and unaware how far they were shining, was shining lights on the cloud from ground level.

The lights were not a 'planet'. They were not 'Chinese lanterns'. They were not a satellite. They were not the International Space Station. They were lights, shone from ground level, and yet I was stopped so many times by people who have said, 'but they were seen in other places. They must have been not of this Earth'. I read it in the paper, so it must be true. The whole stupid episode has has driven me absolutely mad - to the point where I have not wanted to leave the house for fear of somebody else mentioning it.

To the more gullible people out there who still want to believe because they want to believe. Because 'they were seen elsewhere as well', try this simple experiment. If you live in Ross. On a relatively cloud free day - one with the odd puffy cumulous perhaps, look up at a specific cloud and note it's shape. Then phone somebody in say Brampton Abbotts, Weston, Whitchurch or even Gloucester, describe its shape to them and ask if they can see it too. Look up at the more distant full moon when it is rising in the east, phone up somebody in Japan and ask if they can see it too, QED Subject closed.

I made a definite decision last night! I have mentioned it before but I intend to severely cut back on the news we publish here. From today onwards. We are only going to publish news which directly concerns the town of Ross-on-Wye, the local villages and news which effects tourism in the Wye Valley. I did seriously consider cutting out news publication altogether. The reason being, so that I have more time to concentrate more on the much more important tourism side of 'Wyenot'. I mentioned this to Tina in bed last night though and she persuaded me otherwise.

As a result, there will be no more news published here about the more distant places like Hereford. Coverage of local events and news from those who support us will continue, as ever and this should allow more time for the tourist attracting updates.

Being keen on the science of astronomy and space travel, I follow the progress of the International Space Station (ISS) and sometimes photograph or film it as it passes over England. On Friday evening I took a trip to the Prospect, aware that it was going to rise in the west at precisely 22 minutes and 46 seconds past 10 pm. I arrived about an hour early, so that I could set up the camera to film and whilst putting the equipment together, a group of about 20 people, who were drinking at the Royal Hotel following a wake, asked what I was doing. 'I'm going to film the ISS,' I explained and they were fascinated by the thought.

To my surprise, they decided to wait with me and began asking questions, each of them coming up and asking, 'What time will we see it?' I must have repeated, '22 minutes and 46 seconds past ten,' half a dozen times whilst waiting and then the self doubt started to creep in... suppose these people wait with me for an hour and nothing happens. I began to worry. 'What if my research is wrong. I'm going to look a right idiot!'

At 10.21, all eyes were on the sky to the west and the countdown began. At 10:22:46 on the dot, it appeared above the horizon, climbing from 10 to 19 degrees altitude as predicted, the crowd cheered and my heart began to beat more confidently again. They all watched it, amazed, saying, 'there are people in space on board that dot' to one another before returning to the wake. Panicking about making myself look an idiot in front of the unexpected audience somewhat upset my photography as far as filming goes but we had a great time waiting, and I got a few good shots. In the photo below, it can be seen to the left - the planet Venus centre.

I went to cover the 8th Ross-on-Wye Country Music Festival over the weekend. The people at that event are lovely eccentrics - and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word. They know that country music is probably my least favourite music - beaten in the 'least' stakes only by boom, boom music which people inflict from the windows of passing cars, but I always have such a good time in their company and it's surprising how some of them even remember my name from the previous years.

I took the opportunity this year to film an 'imaginary western' - 'Shooting Cowboys'. Would like to have used Jack Bruce's 'Theme from an Imaginary Western' as the sound track but couldn't afford the license and so used a more affordable guitar tune which I had previously licensed. It can be seen above or in the separate article.

I was not going to run this but since writing in my blog about the event - which I did in jest - and a ridiculous, sensationalist story in the local newspaper a week later, which gullible people have been taken in by, my life has been miserable.

I have been stopped in the street by people who have been taken in by the stupid story and the follow-ups, who insist that there was 'something out there'.

This is the sequence of photos which I shot, 2 seconds apart, over a period of about 2 minutes. The lights were moving in the same pattern for 2 hours - until the cloud layer, which they were shining on had dispersed.

Note the beam, which shines on the bottom of the clouds, originates from the ground - in the Springfield Road area of Earth - 430 light years distant from the star Polaris, which can also be seen in the sequence. Note also how they only shine on the cloud - not on the patches of clear sky.

The regular, circular dance pattern of the lights does not show up particularly well as, in order to film the lights, I had to use a long exposure, hence a slow frame rate - which was different from the motion of the subject, giving a similar effect to the spokes in wagon wheels appearing to run backwards on celluloid film. My movement of the camera is not perfect either as I held it by hand, leaning on a wall, so a few of the shots are blurred as I moved. The photos which make up the individual frames are totally unprocessed. Two lenses were used - a 135 mm and a 10.5 mm fisheye (to photograph the wide field of view). The latter is why the buildings (my house and garden shed) appear to be curved.

What can I say about this week? It has been a busy one with lots to cover - so much in fact that I was unable to do it all as some events clashed. We were unable to make the party at Cuckoo's Corner. Really sorry about that but we hope it went well and that we can make next year's event.

This week we are behind with a few ad updates on 'Wyenot' and putting up new ones. The crazy thing about running this web site is that by far the most time consuming things involved are the things which earn us zero money - all of the news coverage for starters - everything, in fact except for the ads. The odd bits that do earn us an income are a struggle to fit in, in between all of the free stuff. We have set aside this coming Friday to catch up on the updating and adding of our supporters' advertising pages.

I had a book publisher contact me this week, asking if I would be interested in writing a 'Ross-on-Wye Through Time' book. I did consider it but asked first about financial arrangements as this would involve a lot of work. 'An 8 per cent royalty on sales plus 10 copies of the book and an option to buy further copies at 50% of shop price' was the answer. Who do they think they are trying to kid! 8 per cent for the person who does all of the hard work and 92 per cent less print costs for the publisher. Sounds as poor a deal as running a town web medium. Think I'll shelve that suggestion.

I really enjoyed Clementine and her friend's performance at Broome Farm on Sunday. Although I am not a huge, huge fan of opera, I do like to watch one occasionally. This stems from when I was young and my father, or his sister would take me to Covent Garden. Clementine's event though stood out amongst all past opera events I have been to, due to her personality and the great friendships Tina and I have forged with Clementine herself, her family and friends from or around Broome Farm. And with visitors to farm events, who come regularly from around the country and Europe. Even if you think you do not like opera, I recommend that you watch the two films of Clementine's performance. They might just change your mind.

I'm not going to ramble on here much further this week as I am desperately short of time, so until next week.................It's Ross Country Music Festival this weekend. Not my kind of music, I must admit but the people are nice. I hope the rain holds off and that it is a successful event for all involved. May see you there. Think I'll write a 'country' song, so they can play it backwards - I can then go back 10.5 years (pre WN), get my life back, and spend some of the money I had back then before it was drained by promoting Ross-on-Wye.

This week turned out to be one of those very busy weeks, but on a family level. Tina's son, Mike landed himself a live-in job as a chef for the Conniston Hotel, near Skipton and rather than work on gathering news at the weekend, Tina and I found ourselves in North Yorkshire relocating him. Owning a van is great but can have its disadvantages when friends and family move house or buy something big from a shop. (I don't mind really.)

As we were in a northerly location, albeit 80 miles away from Stocksbridge, we used the opportunity of being in Yorkshire to visit my very sick sister, Jan. I was extremely tired after the drive, so we stayed overnight there. We had a reet champion time in't Dales and Moors but driving 550 miles, taking in the M50, M5, M42, M6 and M62 on the way up and the M1, M42 M5 and M50 coming back down south, on the hottest days of the year in that van has just about done me in. It is Tuesday as I write this and I am struggling to keep my eyes open.

I took a few photos today, of the Herefordshire Council arranged dog training sessions by the bandstand, which we inflicted upon our own infamous Eric, and of the great work that Ross-in-Bloom are doing to brighten up Pigs Alley but other than that, we are a little lacking on the news reporting front this week. Hopefully, things will get back to normal for next week.

I could not believe that the local newspaper ran that 'Is there something out there?' story last week, taking up virtually the whole front page with it! When I ran the few lines about the incident in this blog, the week before, I did so in jest, and explained EXACTLY what the 'strange' lights were. There was nothing strange about them. They were coming from the ground in the Springfield Road area and lighting up the thin layer of low cloud above. I did not mention this before but I actually fired both a red laser and a powerful torch beam back, in reply. The beam from the red laser was too narrow and did not reflect back but my torch did, and had exactly the same effect.

I could possibly understand somebody not seeing the beam from the ground and finding the light show a little strange but to run it as a sensationalist tabloid style alien story, a week late, having read our explanation as to their source, both here and on Facebook beforehand, 'There have been reports in other local newspapers and on social networking sites' (I'm pretty sure it wasn't published anywhere else) was just so funny. It kept me amused for ages.

For the record. I do believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe. It is mathematically impossible for it not to exist, given the trillions of stars in our galaxy and the trillions of galaxies in just the known universe. We may find evidence of it one day, as close to home as Mars or Saturn's moon, Triton but I also believe that the chances of us ever making contact with extra terrestrial Intelligence are about as likely as the chances of Herefordshire Council filling the pothole at the end of Three Crosses Road. Seriously though: time travel becoming a reality (at least for particles with zero mass such as electromagnetic waves) has more of a chance than a visitation from an intelligent extra terrestrial being.

We had a phone call on Friday from the Heart of England Tourism Awards, asking us to enter 'Wyenot' for an award. I have never thought about entering 'Wyenot' for any awards in the past but having mentioned the call on Facebook, many told us that we should go for it. We have not entered, for two reasons:
1. The closing date gave us only 3 days to do all the form filling and to post the entry by snail mail when we were already committed to going to Yorkshire for the weekend.
2. On looking at the various categories for entries, the category we fall into is open only to 'Enjoy England Official Partners' (which we are not).

To this day, it is a common misconception that 'Wyenot' is either an official Herefordshire provided resource, or is a large company, employing people to run it. Apart from the obvious phone calls of the, 'Can you put me through to Tina in Accounts,' kind, other things lead me to this conclusion. When I recently bought a lawn mower, it came in a cardboard box and the shop assistant helped me carry it to the van. On the way there I made conversation, asking how he enjoyed working for that particular shop. When we arrived at the van and he saw the sign on the side, he said; 'Oh. You work for Wyenot.com. What's it like working for them?'
I think that 'Heart of England Awards' made the same mistake when they called us.

I was sent an email from You Tube telling me that my 'Ross-on-Wye: Market Town and Gateway to the Wye Valley' video was popular and asking if I would like to earn money from it by putting an advertisement 'to the right, on the You Tube page'. I did wonder about it and eventually said yes, then filled in the declarations that I own the rights to all content. The ad appeared yesterday but it was not just 'to the right on the You Tube page', they put a second one on the video itself and this appeared on the front page of 'Wyenot'.

Luckily there was a way to disable the ad and I have done that. It may seem silly turning down the money but I have spent the past 10 years determined to keep 'Wyenot' free of the more tacky kind of advertising, which an overlay that had to be closed down before the film could be watched was. It was an ad for 'Awesome Holidays'. Apologies to those who saw it before I realized it was there. The video incidentally has been watched 1,286 times in 1 month, so it is pretty popular - but not quite as popular as the Symonds Yat one, which has been watched 6,286 times since February. Both have also been watched a lot from the Vimeo stream.

Several 'What's On' events have arrived here in the past few days. Apologies. I am not ignoring the senders. I am just behind with emails and updating stuff but will try my best to add them later today.

Just been shown a lead story (see Tina walked the dog in last week's blog) Hehehehehehehahahahahahehehehahahahehehehahahagasp hehehehahahahehehehahahahehehehahaha gasp, roll on floor hehehehahahahehehehahaha choke hehehehahahahehehehahaha wish I could stop laughing. Hehehehahaha it's no good, I just can't. Hehehehahahahehehehahahahehehehahahaahehehehahahahehehehahahaheheheh boohoo boohoo, damn, I'm crying now with laughter boohooboohooboohoo. Oops.Oh dear. Anybody got some 'Tena lady' I can borrow?

Quite a few events took place on Saturday and we covered as much as we could. We went along to 'Bioblitz', a 24 recording of wildlife and nature on the Perrystone estate. This event was great and I would really like to have included more of the actual wildlife in the video we filmed but this would have made the sequence too long. I have included some but even with cutting something from all of the interviews, I still only just about managed to shorten the film to 10 minutes. For those interested in wildlife and conservation, the video is worth watching.

From the Perrystone estate, we went along to the fete at Llangrove Primary school. This event was well attended and it was after this that we took the photos below. What a novel use of an old red phone box! Excellent idea! It is being used as a book exchange, where Llangrove villagers are able to borrow/swap a book and just return it when they have finished.

The events above both clashed with the British Legion Fun Day by the bandstand but we did manage to get there right at the end and take a photo. Jules King supplied us with photos from the actual event.

Hundreds of cyclists rode through town on Friday as part of the John 'O Groats to Land's End route and I went into town to film the event. Having done so though I have decided not to use the video footage. Instead I have run just a few photos. I apologize to those few readers whom I know were expecting video coverage of the event but, to be honest, the traffic in town was absolutely horrendous and they rode through in dribs and drabs. I did film 90% of them and could spend hours editing the footage into a video of them passing by - one small group after another but, to be honest, a film of hundreds of bikes rounding the bend from Gloucester Road into High Street is not something that people would watch, so I have stuck to just the photo article.

Having stood for two hours on the corner of Gloucester Road and High street during the cycle through, I felt ill. The traffic fumes were just awful. One couple shouted abuse at me - I assume, thinking that I was one of the cyclists' organizers: 'You and your bloody bikes are causing traffic chaos'.
'It has nothing to do with me, madam and I think you will find that it is the other way around. This is just the usual traffic chaos and it is causing the bikes a problem.'
The bikes were actually moving faster than the cars, delivery lorries and buses, which were getting held up by what I think of as the 'Rosswyn Bottleneck'.

Whilst on the subject of Cycling. One of the things I have planned for the future from an information point of view on the 'Local Activities' area of 'Wyenot' is the publication of a series of walking / cycling routes. Rather than draw maps and write route descriptions though, I thought it might be nice to ride / walk the routes myself and film them, producing short, descriptive videos of the various routes. To this end, I recently tried wearing a miniature camera on a headband and filming totally hands free.

The video (right) is only a very rough and quickly thrown together test of the hands free camera's capabilities and is not entirely what I have in mind for the finished product. It will give an idea though of what can be achieved photographically. This test is a film of my daughter, Sarah and her boyfriend, James riding the Ross-on-Wye cycle route, which runs from from Hildersley to the Walford Road. I also rode the route during the test but was wearing the camera, so I obviously do not appear in the video. Sarah was not really riding like a bat out of Hell, I speeded the film up in post production and added some music - pretty boring music unfortunately, because I did not want to spend money on a license just for a test run of the method. The test should give an idea of roughly the kind of thing I have in mind.

ABBOTTS CLOSE ... HILLVIEW ROAD. Do those two places look alike to you? I thought not. They obviously do to Royal Mail though as I just had a call from a man in Abbotts Close, who looked me up in the phone book. The Road Fund License disc I ordered on-line for my van has just been delivered to his house, even though my address is written clearly on the envelope. What was it that Rudyard Kipling said? 'I am the cat that walks by himself and all places are alike to me'. Perhaps, by 'cat' he meant 'postman'.
Thank you for being honest and for calling me Sir. Not everybody would have done that.

Ouch! I needed to look for something in the garden shed during the week and in searching, looked inside an old bag sitting on a shelf. Sticking my hand inside, I discovered that it contained a wasp's nest. I was stung on the wrist and as I pulled my hand out, the wasps swarmed inside the shed. They stung me on the leg and ankle as I made my escape to the garden. The leg and ankle stings healed up quickly but my wrist has been itching like crazy ever since. Now that the swelling has gone down I can see the actual entry holes. I was stung 6 times within a small patch of my wrist. No wonder it took longer for that one to heal!

The Italian Market was really good! Despite the fact that my idea of Italian food is a 3 for £3 pizza from Asda, or heating up a packet of Findus 'Carborundum' (as I call it 'Carbonnara' is what Findus call it), it was good to see the town busy on a Friday for the visiting market and I was almost tempted to buy something. Blimey though! Was it expensive or was it expensive! I didn't notice it at the time but I'm pretty sure I noticed on the film I shot, a price tag of £49 on a bottle of olive oil. I may be mistaken but I don't think so. Take a look at the film and see if it was just my eye sight. The aromas and general atmosphere about town were great. Reminded me of a week I once spent unexpectedly in Palmanova, Italy, alone because my car had broken down.

I should not have written what I did last week about Thursday. All had gone well up until then. I took Matt to 'Download' at Castle Donington on Wednesday and arrived back OK. Then. On Thursday, I was just settling into my 'day off' when I had a message to say that Tina's son, Mike was stuck in Leeds and had lost his train fare home. This resulted in a late afternoon drive to Yorkshire and back. Then on Monday, I had to collect Matt from 'Download' again. Over 800 miles in 5 days - in a van with a seat which gives me backside ache after 10 miles. Maybe this week will be a little quieter.

I was simply amazed when I reached 'Download' on Monday. With hindsight, I should have taken a camera but I was there in my capacity as family taxi driver. There had been some serious rain during the festival, which of course, with tens of thousands of people walking on it, had made the ground very muddy. I was absolutely stunned on arriving, at the sight of thousands upon thousands of pairs of abandoned shoes and wellington boots, where people had got stuck in the mud and simply stepped out of them. I'm sure that thousands will have already taken it but it would have made a great photo!

On the way home, we stopped at MacDonald's and we were approached by a bare footed man who asked, 'You don't happen to have a spare pair of shoes with you, do you?' Not really the kind of thing I tend to take out with me, just in case I might need them, I'm afraid.

This comment was sent to me during the week, from a lady in America. She had just watched the recent Ross-on-Wye film:

'Alan. This was exquisite! It took my breath away. I love this town. I love the journey you took me through. I could feel the transition of night from day. The people seem as if they always have something to do in the little town. The sky, the water, the overhead view are all remarkable. With all the oil that is leaking in my country, your town make a person like me wish for my days of ago when I lived in a small little country town. Great work and beauty which I know comes from your heart. Loved this! Thank you for sharing. Francine.'

The new Ross-on-Wye video has had lots of feedback by various means, all of it good, from all over the UK, from America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Holland and even Cinderford. I'm glad the films are being appreciated. Making Ross look pretty is the reason behind them. Thank you Francine! Your comment brightened up an otherwise pretty dark week (family stuff, not Ross related darkness).

Tina walked the dog at midnight on Saturday whilst I was making a cup of tea to celebrate having watched football on the telly for the first time in 4 years. I was stood at the sink, pouring the water into the cups when she banged on the window, shouting, 'Come out here! Hurry up!' By her anxious looks, I imagined that somebody was being murdered in the street or similar and ran outside.

'Look up in the sky,' she said. There were three lights - no beams, just three lights, dancing in formation across the cloud like a scene from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. Not wanting to miss the word exclusive of capturing the first visitors to our planet from another world, I rushed inside and fetched the camera to film the occasion (see photo frame below). It was only on watching the resulting film that I could detect a common source as the origin of the cosmic dance. The alien visitors live in Springfield Road and were playing with a laser, perhaps celebrating England not losing. Oh well. Back to just dreaming of capturing a world exclusive on digital celluloid!

Also of note, perhaps. Tina and I went to Asda on Saturday and bought 45 cans of Fosters (3 boxes for £20 offer) and one box of PG Tips. The young man on the checkout would not believe that the Fosters was for Tina and the tea bags for me. You enter a different, topsy-turvy universe when you visit our house, where skinny people drink gallons of beer and fat people drink tea with no sugar and a tiny dash of milk. True!

PS. I just remembered that I added a page for mobile video at some stage during the week. This is to make finding some of the short films easier for those using mobile devices as I have noted from our server log that many are using these lately. I cannot possibly know the format for all types of mobile device, so I have set this up so that it is easy to navigate using my iPod Touch. This, I think, means that it should be fine on iPhone and iPad but I am not sure about Blackberry, Raspberry or any other kind of fruit. If you own one of these, I would be interested to know if it works. It will work on your computer too, but not in an aesthetically pleasing kind of way.

I am totally worn out at this point! It seems that I have been on the go, constantly since Friday afternoon. A lot happened over the weekend - all of it nice but from my point of view it has been difficult keeping up. I spent 14 hours travelling to events and filming at the weekend - and for every hour of filming there were three more of processing. It has literally been 5 days of not getting to bed before 2.00 am and tomorrow, in my capacity as taxi driver, I have to take my son to Castle Donnington for the Download Festival. How I am looking forward to Thursday and perhaps a lay-in!

Please God. If you don't let anything happen in Ross or nearby on Thursday, I'll vote for you at the next general election! And I'll cover the Italian Market on Friday.

Garway Folk Festival was very nice. I would have enjoyed it more had it not been for the rushing here, there and everywhere to other events occurring at the same time. Hopefully, next year, I will get the chance to enjoy it as a folk festival and not have to 'shoot and shoot'. I was a little upset that, having been asked to cover it for 'WYENOT', somebody kept announcing that I was a cameraman filming for YOU TUBE. I would like to point out that I never film for You Tube, I film for 'WYENOT'. There is little point in me filming events for Wyenot if people go elsewhere to watch the footage, thus skipping the reason for my existence.

Broome Farm was also a great event which again, I rather had to rush as it clashed with both the folk festival and a party we had been invited to. As most will be aware, Broome Farm is our favourite local venue and both bands performing on Saturday, The Deadbeats and the Broome Cupboard Blues Band played brilliantly. We managed to catch the second set of the first and the first set of the second band.

Krunch played well at the White Lion, which was absolutely heaving with people for the event. I filmed one song at this event then put the camera in the van and hid, on a seat by the river to listen. It had been a swelteringly hot day but as I sat there, a few raindrops fell and I enjoyed sitting in the rain. I don't make a habit of listening to the conversations of others but as I sat there, I overheard one of a large group of visitors saying to the others, 'That band is great and the bloke is a great singer. I'd pay money to hear him again.' There you go, Paul! Some positive feedback for you. Sorry if my film recording of the one song is not the best. It was the last five minutes of the 14 hours of filming and I just wanted to put the camera down and hide away.

Oh well! Enough for now. Castle Donnington tomorrow and again on Monday, but hopefully a day of rest in between on Thursday. Hopefully lots of you will visit town on Friday for the Italian Food Market. If so, also hopefully, I'll see you there. I do actually have some Italian genes in me. My great, great grandfather was one Peligrino Casciani, who hailed from Milan and the bloodline line continued by way of surname name until paternal grandmother died in 1987. Sounding like a boring genealogy anorak here so, I'd better put paid to that.... If you have no Italian in you but would like some, justa aska.

P.S. Thank you to Julie Andrews for looking up my moth of last week. Appears it might be a Poplar Hawk Moth.

For a week which included a bank holiday, as far as events go it has been pretty quiet. Tina worked the holiday Monday at the White Lion, which was absolutely heaving with visitors from both near and afar and, to be honest, I was so bored I cut the lawn when it didn't really need cutting then went for a bike ride - both of which put me in danger of losing weight. I'm currently on a keep fit campaign and will be a 17 stone weakling again before you know it.

I had forgotten how good bike riding is. My daughter, Sarah and her boyfriend, James bought some new bikes this week, I serviced my rust coloured (once silver) Raleigh, using a car tyre compressor and a can of oil found in the shed and, to my amazement, I could still ride it - pretty well. You may see me riding to some events now rather than using the van. Please don't shout, 'Get off and milk it,' as we used to do to our mates, as kids. It will put me off and my physical fitness regime will fail miserably.

There were two good events which took place on Sunday night. Paul Randell's band 'Krunch' played at JD's and 'Silva' played at the White Lion. You can see photos from both of these gigs in a separate article but on the whole, other than cycling and gardening, I spent the weekend on some background servicing of the 'Wyenot' website, which few will notice. More observant users may notice the link buttons to our social media pages which have appeared throughout and the changes made to the shops and accommodation pages but most of it was just background code changes, which do not show.

771 people from Ross West took the trouble to go and vote on Thursday in the Ross by-election (albeit that one spoiled his/her ballot paper). It is my guess that the several thousand who did not bother will be the ones who moan about the Town Council. It was nice that comments about the man at Brampton Abbotts polling station during the general election had been noted, and that two very nice, polite people 'manned' (not sure if I can still use that word and remain politically correct - but I just did) 'manned' the polling station.

I do not know whether or not there is any connection but whilst on the subject of politeness. Having written what I did about Morrison's two weeks ago, several people have actually called me to say that they had noticed a marked increase in politeness from the staff at Morrison's lately. I must admit that Tina and I went there to pick up a few bits during the week and one staff member overheard us talking to each other, discussing where we might find a certain item and went out of his way to be helpful. May be just coincidence, maybe not. Doubt I'll ever find out but the improvement is a good one.

The new Ross video is getting watched a lot - around 700 times this week over the various servers (at the time of writing), and feedback from the regular friends around the world has been good. Amusingly, when I looked on Sunday, it had had more response in terms of You Tube ratings from Saudi Arabia than it had from the people of Ross-on-Wye (see You Tube statistics diagram, though it could just be that the You Tube 'Insight' is lagging behind, as it is apt to do). Never mind, people must be enjoying it as the statistics also tell me it is also being shared by email and that is a good sign. The You Tube rating system in general has gone a bit weird lately. It has also been rated a lot on facebook and somewhat on Vimeo (I have not really publicized the Vimeo upload). It is however the future tourist type visitors who count, as it is they who eventually bring prosperity to the town of Ross.

Thinking of Saudi Arabia, I went there some thirteen years ago - almost to the day, and my brother, John collected me from Dhahran airport at about 2.00 am local time. As he drove me to his house, in a temperature which even at that time of the morning was like being baked inside a fan assisted oven, a large winged creature flew into the car windscreen with a very loud splat. 'What kind of bird was that?' I asked. To which John replied, 'That wasn't a bird. It was a moth.' The next day, a stinging type creature - like a bee but two inches long, approached me in his garden. I was very glad at that point that I had packed my brown corduroy shorts.

The moth below however, although not quite as big, or exotic as it's Saudi Arabian cousin had a wingspan approaching 3 inches. Far from photographing it in a God forsaken place in the desert though, I photographed this one whilst collecting Tina from work at the White Lion on Monday evening. I should have put a £2.00 coin next to it to give an idea of scale but did not because I had left my wallet at home. Anyone know what it is? I hope this truly monster moth (by English standards) is a sign of a good summer to come.

There are one or two events coming up over the next few days. It is late at the time of writing this, so I cannot do it right now but I shall be updating the 'What's On' page later today. Keep an eye out there for things going on throughout the summer months. Hope to see you at some of them.

With things beginning to liven up for the summer, and with filming for the new Ross-on-Wye film the past week has been an extremely busy one. I have quite literally spent every moment of every day either in bed (though nowhere near enough of that bit), out filming, taking photos or sat at this desk editing video or items for Wyenot. It has been a good week though and I have enjoyed being out and about, spending too much time in the sun.

The film is complete, and running live on the front page. You can also read something about it or watch it in the separate news article and, until I film something else, watch it above. I have to say that I am much more pleased with the end result than I was with the earlier one. Made with a Hollywood style budget of £10.50, that is, if you don't include the music licenses, my time and the helicopter flight, I think it is pretty good value for money. The £10.50 was for odd cups of tea and coffee bought in cafés about town to keep me maintained. The movie would have gone over budget but thankfully, Pots and Pieces kindly gave me free tea and cake and Marie Fullwood of the burger van kindly gave me free tea and a burger during the in town filming bits. Thank you very much for that! You are wonderful!

I wish I had taken a second camera into Pots and Pieces! I was filming the market clock at the time and left the camera outside, running on auto-shoot and pointing apparently at the sky. It was great fun sitting the other side of the window and watching people approach it, hear the shutter click and then looking up at the sky to see what was going on. I could see them pointing upwards and asking each other, 'what's happening?' Sometimes, large groups would gather round, wondering what was going on. I might set this scene up again, purely to film people's reactions. A bit like the £1 coin super-glued to the pavement.

The John Kyrle Day was great fun! These A.R.T. events are really bringing life back to the town and it's good to see a community spirit manifesting itself more and more. May there be many more of them!

I was amazed on Monday! There I was, sat at my computer working when I heard the garden gate open and Eric the dog getting excited. I looked outside to see a visitor. 'Hello, I'm Chris from Tasmania. I was in England, so I called by to say hello'. People from Three Crosses Road rarely call by but Chris was a 'Wyenot' reader from 12,000 miles away who had made a special effort to come and say hello, and to thank me for a letter I had published for him some months back.

Chris was visiting the area and had asked me to publish a note asking his old friends from the 1960s to contact him. To be honest, thinking that I might not have time to deal with any response to his request, I had taken the unusual step of publishing Chris' own email address rather than my own, so seeing no replies myself, had forgotten about it but he told me the response had been huge. One man from America had written to him and had put him in touch with lots of old local school friends.

I remember last time I published the email address of the sender of a similar enquiry, the 'Journal' had immediately jumped on the story, contacted the sender, sent a photographer along and made a big front page story about the reunion taking place, which we made possible, without even mentioning that it was 'Wyenot' that had put the parties back in touch. I stopped publishing the email addresses of letter writers for this reason but made an exception with Chris. It is interesting to know (from the horse's mouth) that after publishing Chris' email address, the Hereford Times immediately jumped on the bandwagon, sending him an email asking lots of questions about his pending visit to Ross. 'I just deleted it', said Chris. 'It was none of their business'. Well done Chris! There's always somebody out there, just waiting to jump on the bandwagon.

Well! I have nothing in my diary for Wednesday. I'm going to sit on the sofa, exercise my remote control finger and 'veg out' for the day. I hope that the new film does some good for Ross. Lots of feed back so far - so far, all good. Thank you for that! I'll be back to work on Thursday. Until next time.............

You may have noticed a change to the top of this blog page. I have added a small box which shows the latest 4 'tweets' from the Wyenot.com Twitter account. We have started using Twitter to announce what we are currently covering or up to regarding Ross and the Wye Valley, late event announcements and all updates to Wyenot in general. If you would like to keep up with all the latest Wyenot News and other updates as they happen, you can follow us on Twitter.

Whilst the sun has been shining this week I have been out and about filming in Ross-on-Wye. This is for a new 'Ross-on-Wye' video for the front page of Wyenot, and for the 'Ross-on-Wye' page- to keep the main page fresh for regular visitors, but mainly to attract people to the town. The new film will show more of the pretty and historic buildings in Ross in brighter, higher definition (1080p) than the current 'Ross-on-Wye' film does. The original Ross film has been watched 11,302 times at the time of writing this but film making is a self taught art form for me and I think I have learned a lot about film making since producing the original. I shall not remove the original but will add this new one 'as well as'.

I have been filming over the past two days using an extremely wide angle lens, which is able to capture scenes an ordinary video camera cannot capture and hopefully I will be able to get enough material together to produce a final edit within a week from now. I want to try to get this one just perfect though, so if it does turn out to be longer than a week before you see it, this is the reason. I have shown two frames from the new film below this blog.

If you are wondering what happened to the DVD I spoke about producing? The reason I have delayed is lack of confidence. Other than from a few faithful, regular friends and the odd comment made when I meet somebody in the street, I receive very little feedback about the Wyenot video series from Ross people. I get plenty from the world wide film-making community on 'Vimeo' about the technical quality of the films, and the majority of this is good feedback, but I hardly ever hear any feedback as to whether or not the work is good for the Town and for the local area in general. When few local people comment, I tend to lose confidence and doubt the work.

Although I am on about my third edit of the Symonds Yat film, I am still not happy with it - mainly from a narration point of view. I have the most dull voice imaginable and hate watching it myself for that reason. As well as filming in Ross, I have also started shooting more footage to make a better Symonds Yat film in the near future. The Symonds Yat film is my overall most watched video. It has been watched 17,003 times in its various edit forms over the past year, but only about 6 people have ever passed comment and this worries me. I intend to remake this one. When I am happy with both the Ross-on-Wye and the Symonds Yat films, I will produce the DVD eventually but I want to be certain that people actually like the material beforehand.

This week has been pretty quiet from a news point of view but there is quite a bit coming up over the next few days, not least of which is the A.R.T. John Kyrle's Birthday event on Saturday. I hope this event will get a lot of support. We will be there to cover the day.

One last thing before I sign for this week... I went to Morrison's today. The store may be improving by introducing a larger café but I think what would help them more than anything is to train the staff - perhaps by sending them each, individually to ASDA in Hereford to buy some shopping, with instructions to take notes on customer care. I do all of my main shopping in ASDA and one of the main reasons for this (other than the better choice of food in stock) is that absolutely all of the staff are very polite and friendly, and most make conversation with you whilst checking out your goods.

Today, I bought a few goods in Morrison's and, although most of the checkout staff do say hello and go through the motions, the checkout I used today was being operated by a woman who totally ignored me, checked the food out and did not utter a word, other than, That's £13.40'. No hello, no please, no thank you. Nothing. I then went to the kiosk on my way out and bought 5 items. The young man on the kiosk was quite polite but he asked me for £14.60. 'That's not right,' I said. 'It should be more than that.' He looked again at my purchase.... 'Oh, I forgot to scan one of the items - that's £24.80 then.' Not a word of thanks. I could have walked out without saying anything and his stock would have been down. Kind of wish I had. Oh well. That's Morrison's in Ross.

What a shame that so few people turned up for this year's Carnival Princess Judging. Usually, dozens of young hopeful princesses attend the judging at the Larruperz Centre but this year saw a total of five. The judging event was publicized here, in the Ross Gazette and in all of the local schools but it seems that few went along. The event went ahead as usual though and the young princess chosen, Adele Brooke earned her position on the Carnival float.

The BBC reported today (Tuesday) that the annual 'Ross Live!' festival is not going to go ahead due to 'lack of interest'. The report said; 'There was no longer any demand for it in the town. The festival, which last year had Pam Ayres as a headline act, has been running for five years since replacing the old International Festival. That drew names such as The Stranglers, Elkie Brooks and Van Morrison but collapsed in 2004 with financial losses despite sell-out shows.'

I was not a fan of the International Festival - far from it in fact, after the way they used me to their own ends two years on the trot but the way I see it, there never was a demand for the 'Ross Live!' festival and it certainly did not replace the international Festival. The 'Unintentional Festival' came closer to replacing that event, with a much wider audience appeal. 'Ross Live!' was simply an elitist series of concerts with limited appeal which suited the needs of a small minority.

The time between annual events apparently speeds up as one gets older. I notice this on four days of the year in particular, May Day, Carnival Day, Christmas Day and the JKHS Leavers' Ball. On each of these occasions it seems as if it were only a week or so since I was last there. Friday evening found me at the Chase Hotel, waiting for guests to arrive at the JKHS Leavers' Ball, or 'Prom', if you prefer that term. This year I covered the event photographically but in a slightly different way. Instead of taking a few group photos, I took over 2,000 pictures of those arriving and the vehicles in which they arrived and have put together a 'photomotion' sequence of the event. Every single frame in the film is an individual high definition photo, which can be obtained from me if required. I hope you enjoy watching.

Somebody asked me today, 'Is it ok to stream one of your videos on our web site?' Of course it is. I do not mind this at all as long as they are not altered in any way and are streamed from my 'You Tube' account - not 'Vimeo'. I put them on 'You Tube' specifically for streaming in HD but my 'Vimeo' page is not quite the same thing. 'Vimeo' is a community of people who enjoy the art of film-making rather than a place for just uploading and streaming video. I can stream from there in HD but I only allow that facility on Wyenot because I have to pay for HD downloads. My 'You Tube' account can be found at www.youtube.com/wyenotnews.

Tina and I went to vote last Thursday. I have no intention of revealing my personal choice of candidate here but I would however like to relate my amusing experience at the polling station. We went along to Brampton Abbotts Primary School to put our Xs in the right box and on walking in, there was one person in front of myself in the queue, an elderly lady who was standing in front of the desk to collect her ballot paper. The desk was manned by two people, an older man and a middle aged man. The elderly lady was being dealt with by the older clerk and so I approached the other.

'THE QUEUE IS ON THE LEFT!, yelled the older clerk, in a really stroppy voice as I showed the middle aged man my polling card.

'I'm sorry,' I replied, apologetically. 'I thought you were both looking at cards.'

'NO! WE ARE BOTH DOING DIFFERENT JOBS!', demanded the miserable older man and I joined the queue behind the elderly lady, Tina standing behind me.

'State your name,' said the older man to the elderly lady, who was obviously a little hard of hearing and did not understand him. She did mutter something in reply but it was obviously the wrong answer. 'STATE YOUR NAME!', he demanded again, rudely. The same thing happened when he asked her to state her address.

By the time I reached the desk, I was unaware that a further queue had built up behind me. 'State your name.' said the older man. 'ALAN WOOD!' I yelled loudly. 'State your address. '1 HILLVIEW ROAD, ROSS-ON-WYE', I yelled. It was at this point that I realized a queue had built up behind - they had seen what had happened and began to laugh.

I waited for Tina to cast her vote and we returned to the van, outside the school. I was just about to start the engine when the younger of the two clerks came running up to the van and knocked on the window. He was a nice person, he was ever so polite and had smiled knowingly at me as I left the polling station.

'Did you find that man offensive?' he asked.
'Yes, I did.' I replied.
'I would like you to know that you are not the only person to find this, others have complained about him in the past and I would like you to complain if you found him offensive.'

I don't know your name I'm afraid but, thank you for the advice. I shall be lodging a complaint. I was concerned, not for myself as I tend to be able to deal with rude, ignorant jobsworths quite adequately but I felt very sorry for the little old lady in front of me in the queue, who was almost quivering in her shoes at the way she was being spoken to.

Pre-election quote from my dad on Facebook: 'It will result in a hung Parliament. I want to supply the rope.'

Everybody has their favourite things to do and for me, there are two events I enjoy covering the most. One is the Mayday Sunrise on May Hill, the other is; everything that happens at Broome Farm - particularly the 12th Night wassail. The reason is quite simple. It is purely down to people. When covering these particular events, absolutely everybody there is friendly and welcoming. I feel that I am a part of the event itself, and not just somebody who is there to take the pictures. I am not in any way running down other events here. I do feel welcome at other events also but, at these events in particular. The fact that I am an ageing hippy at heart and love ye olde English traditions helps as well, I guess.

As has become the norm for me on Mayday, I set my alarm for 3.40 am but awoke naturally at 3.30. My son, Matt volunteered to come with me to help carry the kit up the hill and we set out at 4.30. That climb nearly kills me every year! I find myself gasping for breath for the initial steeper part of the ascent. I am not very fit these days but this is mainly down to the weight of my camera back pack - 22lbs (I just weighed it) plus a lens which does not fit in the bag, a large flask of tea and two tripods. It is always really worth the effort though.

It was not as cold as usual at the summit but the dew on the grass caused the feet of a friend I met up there to go numb. The sunrise itself this year was beautiful and the light just perfect for morning photography, with the people casting long shadows on the grass.

I told Tina that I would be back for 7.00 am, which is about the usual time but, as the weather was so nice, the event went on longer than usual. Matt and I arrived back in Ross at gone 8.00 am, stopping off at Morrisons to buy the ingredients to make a large amount of bacon and egg rolls. My misinformation to Tina made no difference, I could hear the 'Zzzzs' coming from the bedroom upstairs, from outside in the garden when we arrived home to start cooking.

I hope that the terrific atmosphere comes across in the film I shot of the event. Matt appears throughout (with the long blond hair), always standing by the musicians as he helped me out, with the recording of the sound track.

I also enjoyed the party at Wilton Court from an 'atmosphere' point of view. I didn't eat there because I forgot about the food provided and finished up the bacon from Mayday just prior to setting out. Congratulations to you Helen and Roger on the great job you have done with Wilton Court over the past 10 years!

I was only able to stop briefly at the Mayor's Picnic at Wilton Castle. Despite the sudden change for the worst in the weather, there were still quite a few there and I believe quite a bit of money was raised for my personal favourite charity, Macmillan.

I am very much struggling for time tonight after a busy but very enjoyable week, so shall finish here on that note. The May Hill event made me feel happy. See you next week.....

One way or another this has been a busy week for me here at Wyenot HQ, though not all of it has been news, or even Wye Valley related. News wise, I have covered the Town Meeting, the pre-General Election hustings at John Kyrle High School and I met St. George at the Hope & Anchor on his special day.

The Town Meeting took place on Wednesday evening and I made a big mistake there. Rather than sit down, I stood at the back - not realizing quite how long the meeting would last. Unlike past Ross Town meetings I have attended, the room at the Larruperz Centre was full of people. A few had gone along for the meeting itself but I think most were those involved with RoWToP, the Town Plan, which was being published and presented to the Town Council that evening.............

How I wished I had chosen to sit! My general impression of the evening was, Why use 10 words when 600 will do. By the time the Town Plan had virtually been presented, having been hopping from one dead leg to another, leaning on the shelf behind me and changing sides regularly to relieve the weight on my aching back and hips, in a room with an ambient temperature which felt like boiling point, for an hour and a half, I just had to give in and sneak out - just to get to my van seat before I collapsed in public.

At Friday's hustings, I was sensible enough to place a chair behind my video camera tripod and only stood as I sensed the individual candidates answers to the various questions coming to an end. Mostly, judging this was easy and it worked. The exception was the answers given by the, 'I was just going to say what he/she said', UK Independent Party candidate. With the help of the chair, I managed to get through the evening with some energy to spare.

If all else fails, RTFM! (read the manual) Any energy I had reserved from Friday evening's hustings coverage was soon wasted the following morning, and this was totally through my own doing. Our lawn mower broke last year and garden was overgrown - to the point where the the hedge had grown around it, hiding it from view. I went to Focus and bought a new one. I did not realize until I got it home that it came in kit form and I more-or less had to build it myself (well at least, I had to assemble the handle). I finally got it working....

Fantastic! A petrol mower with driven back wheels - much easier to operate on the hilly lawn than our last one. Just pull a lever and it moves forward. That was until it came to emptying the grass box. As I let go of the safety lever, the engine stopped, as it should and I tipped the grass away, out of sight. But then I had to start it again. Thinking I knew which handle was which, I held on and pulled the starter cord. Nothing happened. Tried again. Nothing. An hour and a half later, Russell arrived home. I was by this time, totally exhausted, just from trying to start it. Russell tried pulling the cord for 10 minutes. Nothing. He went out and I tried again. Nothing. The brand new mower very nearly ended its life that day with a hammer shaped dent in its housing.

It was not flooded. My own brain was failing so I took a look at the instructions. It seems that, in the time it took me to empty the grass box, I had mentally confused the safety lever with the clutch and had been holding in the wrong lever.

I changed levers and it started within half a second - before the cord had travelled to its full extent and ran as sweet as a nut. Tina came out sometime later and said, 'Oh good. You managed to get it going then. I was a bit worried there!'

It was very tempting to say, 'Yes Dear. I managed to fix it,' but I'm proud to say that I was honest. I admitted that I had been confusing the brake with the clutch for the past two hours and this earned me a welcome cup of tea. I was dead on my feet by the time I finally got most of the grass cut that evening. Not from the mowing. From my own stupidity - getting angry instead of reading the manual and constantly pulling on a piece of cord attached to the engine.

On Sunday I drove to Yorkshire and back again with Bernice. This was to see my very poorly sister Jan, who needs to have another operation on Thursday. Things are not looking good in this respect but we all shared a good afternoon together.

Work in progress: Actually, I mean play in progress. Since I began filming videos of the Wye Valley for 'Wyenot', I have realized that film making is something I actually enjoy doing - for personal pleasure as well as for a means to an end. During my spare moments, purely for pleasure I am working on the film below: 'Earth Calling'. It is my sci-fi type illusion and escape from reality.

With the exception of the Stone Henge overlay, which was obviously filmed at Stone Henge (in 1970 with a cine camera), all of the film you see (including the Earth scenes) was shot by myself, either in or from the Wye Valley. The solar partial eclipse which swirls took place in May 1987 and was filmed from Cawdor. The Orion nebular at the end was filmed from my garden through a telescope. The Hawkwind music was recorded at a concert which took place at the Roundhouse in 1970 (not by me, although Bernice and I were at the performance) and the spacecraft sound effects are a made up from a mixture of sound from inside a passenger jet and a factory machine. As I said, 'work in progress' I can only do a small bit at a time from both lack of time and the capabilities of my computer processor. It struggles with the added effects and video overlays. The space rock is actually the 'Queen Stone', a standing stone in Goodrich.

I hope to see some of you on May Hill this coming Saturday morning for the sunrise event. Let's hope that the weather stays fine so that a sunrise actually occurs. The BBC web site is showing light rain but they could be lying.

Congratulations to all at Alton Street Surgery! .......on your well deserved award. And thank you for inviting us to the presentation. Although Tina is one of your customers, I am registered with the opposition in Kent Avenue but have often been along to keep Tina company and have always been impressed by the efficiency of your staff. I was extremely impressed when Dr. Steve Field CBE described Alton Street as 'One of the best practices in the country' and I thought Mr. Brookes was great. What a personality!

The weekend saw Tina and I back into covering Ross events and news and I spent virtually the whole of Saturday and much of Sunday with the French visitors from Condé. What a nice lot of people! I really enjoyed meeting you all and hope that you enjoy my short film of the weekend's events. I enjoyed the arrival on Friday evening the most. It was plainly obvious how pleased all families were to see their friends from across the Channel again, some of the friendships going back over 30 years. Long may those friendships continue!

Now that the event season is beginning again, I have once again started to update the news as soon as possible after covering it. Viewers can still look weekly as per usual and not miss anything but updating more regularly helps us - and gets the information out quicker. I will still be running much of the sent in news weekly but events I actually attend will appear as soon as possible after they have taken place.

As a way of letting people know when updates occur - both news and other pages on 'Wyenot' in general, such as places of interest pages - I have started to send out updates via 'Twitter'. If you have a 'Twitter' account and would like to be informed of updates to 'Wyenot', you can 'Follow us' at: http://twitter.com/wyenot_com. If you do not have a 'Twitter' account, it's pretty easy to set one up.

I am not an expert on 'Twitter' - far from it! I have had the account for some years but have only just figured out what it does. The account was originally in my personal name. I set it up on the advice of a friend but did not see a real use for it until I looked at it again this week. A moment of boredom made me look at it this week and, on deeper investigation I thought, 'This could be useful for updating people', so I have changed the account from that of plain, boring 'Alan Wood' to 'Wyenot_com' and have started 'tweeting' all updates to 'Wyenot'. I hope you find this useful. I fully retract my initial thought - 'Twittering is for twats'.

Eyjafjallajökull - the glacier and the volcano thereunder may be an impossible word to pronounce, and may have caused Europe wide problems but it also produced some nice sunsets here in Ross. I filmed two of them and Saturday's was just fantastic. It was not particularly volcanic but I just cannot get over the totally clear sky - not a vapour trail in sight. I have never seen such a clear sky in the 56 years I have been alive and the sun going down over Hay Bluff (from my perspective) was stunning. I hope you enjoy watching the film in the separate article, which I have set to the music of a friend of mine in Olympia, America - Jenelle Aubade. Jenelle has a great voice! There is also another sunset film in the same article - sunsets I have filmed locally and in Somerset over the past year. Enjoy!

My statement on the mobile phone mast: Although we were aware of the meeting about said mast and invited to attend, we deliberately did not attend.

It seems to me that people want mobile phone technology but they do not want the masts which are necessary to make this technology possible. Because many people do not understand this technology, they use the 'microwaves will fry our brains' excuse to try to get the masts located somewhere else.

Raising a mast higher, not only improves coverage, it reduces the risk of the microwave radiation frying people's brains - a risk which is far less anyway than standing by the microwave oven in your kitchen. A microwave oven puts out far more power (around 750 Watts) then a mobile phone, or mobile phone cell and broadcasts on a much more dangerous frequency - around 2.4 GHz.

I do not particularly like the mast. But. That is because it is ugly. Not because it is dangerous!

This is all I intend to say on the subject - We sympathize with all sides of the argument and will publish any releases sent in on the subject but will not be reporting specifically on this issue, in person.

As regular readers will know Tina and I took a week off from 'Wyenot' and local news issues and went away for a few days. I wish I could say that I'm happy to be back at work but, to be perfectly honest, we enjoyed ourselves so much whilst away from it all that I am finding settling back down to our usual routine quite difficult. This is just the usual end of holiday feeling - it will pass.

Bernice and I travelled to freezing cold and extremely windy Yorkshire for the day on Monday to see my sister, Jan, who is suffering ill health and whilst there, I filmed the two of them talking about past times during the 1960s in Barking for a family project I am working on involving the cine film I recently edited. Jan was born at the time the film was shot and appears in the edits as the baby learning how to crawl and then walk.

Tina and I then spent the rest of the week in what turned out to be much warmer climes, south of the Bristol Channel, in Burnham-on-Sea. The weather was fantastic from the moment we arrived until the time we left. Without a camera, I feel naked and so I took the kit with me and made a time lapse film, a bit similar to the Ross-on-Wye film but of Burnham, Berrow and Brean. This can be seen in the blog above but if you are interested, also in a separate article.

Back home, we obviously have not been out and about much as we were not here to do so but things will get back to normal now and I intend to get out, covering local events and places again as of now, so the news and articles on Wyenot will pick up again as of this week.

It will be 10 years this May since I took the first photos specifically to start this web medium, 'Wyenot.com'. 'Wyenot' worked from the very beginning but it has been a long hard struggle, getting the medium known locally and raising local support. Thank you! - to all of the local supporters and readers/viewers who have joined us or stuck with us, making its growth possible.

Coincidentally, May 1st every year is the date of the first annual local event I really enjoy. It is an event which always generates a fantastic atmosphere but sadly, few people from the town of Ross itself attend it. The event is that of watching the sun rise over May Hill at about 5.20 am for the sunrise at 5.42, so it is hardly surprising that the Ross contingent is usually somewhat lacking.

This Year, May 1st falls on a Saturday so it would be really nice to see more people from Ross take the 'healthy' (another word for totally knackering) climb up the Hill to enjoy the centuries old English traditional Mayday Sunrise festival on May Hill. (Wear something warm and take a hot drink if you go!) If you would like to see what it is like beforehand, you can watch last year's festival below. If you do not watch the whole film, wait until the file has downloaded and watch from 7 minutes 10 seconds in to the end. The atmosphere as everybody dances round the trees is just fantastic!

It would be great to see more of you there this year! (And if you could help me carry some of the camera gear to the summit, all the better as this always nearly kills me, but that's not why I am asking. I am just sure that if you like English tradition, you will love this.)

One of the problems with having started 'Wyenot' is that often people see me as responsible for things over which I have no control. I do not work for, or get paid anything by Herefordshire Council! The most recent issue which quite a few people have approached me about is the state of local roads and the pot holes caused by the freezing conditions at the beginning of the year. We have a 'letters' page on 'Wyenot' for this purpose and will willingly publish letters on any subject, but I do not wish to become personally involved.

I know from both letters and articles we have published in the past that Herefordshire Council do take a lot of notice of what is written on Wyenot, so please send in your letters rather than just tell me about it in the street.

I have to admit that I am not a big fan of Herefordshire Council and can moan about them like the rest but, to be fair to them, we did publish a news item some weeks ago, on behalf of the Council which asked people to report pot holes in the road to them, so that they know where they are and can deal with them. The number to ring is: 01432 260000. My daughter, Sarah has all ready reported the one in Ledbury Road, near the roundabout and the one in Cawdor.

I received a lot of feedback after running the first in my series of personal films from the 1960s. Thank you to all those who passed comment to me verbally and on my 'Vimeo' page. I'm pleased you enjoyed it.

The film actually produced a lot more feedback than any of the local films I have made. Although they are watched a lot, hardly anybody ever passes comment on those. It is not really a local matter but for those who did enjoy it, I have made the second in the series 'Barking and Upminster - 1963'. I don't intend to run an article about it but if you would like to watch it, it is the first film in the video blog above. It is far more a personal film than the last edit and shows my younger sister, Jan, when she was less than a year old. Jan is 47 years old now, she lives in Yorkshire and unfortunately, has a malignant tumour in her brain plus secondaries elsewhere. She is undergoing a lot of treatment for the illness but loved seeing herself as a baby.

Just from a personal point of view, I intend to edit more of the old cine footage and film some of the few people who are still alive today plus some modern views of the locations again to go with them, to document our family past. The footage will build up gradually on my Vimeo profile. (Once there, click the blue 'videos' link to find the films.)

I would like to make a film covering a similar era, of places and people in Ross-on-Wye but I have no footage as I did not move here until 1976. If you shot cine film locally during the 1960s and would like it edited and shown here, please contact me.

Having been to Garway again over the weekend, I finished my 'Views from Garway Hill' film on Monday. This is covered in a separate article but again, it can also be watched in the player above. I hope you enjoy the views. Part two of this series is not made yet but will cover some of the history of the hill and the village itself.

Next Week: With the holiday weekend approaching we would like to wish you a Happy Easter! Tina and I were planning an adventure on our boat - filming a canoe trip for the three days after Easter but the weather is not looking good for filming, so this will probably have to be postponed. Whatever the weather, we will be doing something other than working immediately after the Easter 'break' - possibly a trip to the coast, so next week's news will probably be minimal. Until next time..............

With the internet now the most widely used resource by people booking holidays, dining out or going shopping, I thought that these figures might be of interest to both our readers and advertisers alike.

Along with the ordinary server log record, I have been using a system called 'Live Stats' for some time on the 'Wyenot' web server, which, until this week, just 'did what it said on the tin' and showed how many people were looking at which pages, adding up and giving a total at the end of each day. This week though, a new version of the software came out, which can show the same information over any given period. As a result, I can easily look up how many people have looked at any page on 'Wyenot' during any given period.

The top 40 pages over the past 2 months chart below shows full, successful page counts; pages which have actually been loaded and read (or at least, the pictures looked at) over the past two months. The webcam page quite plainly holds the number 1 slot as the currently most used page on the whole web site but the chart shows that the 'Wyenot News' (home page alone) gets an average of 2,050 visits per week and that all of the accommodation finding pages have been hammered during the period.

Of interest to Ross Traders (in general, not necessarily just the 'Association of'), 2409 people specifically looked for information about shops in Ross-on-Wye over the period and for publicans, 5,405 looked for local pubs. 1,049 people looked for property, 2485 people where to dine out and 1,126 for other local businesses. The chart is easy to decipher, so if you are interested, you can spot other interesting information below. Please bear in mind that this is just the top 40 - there are thousands of pages on 'Wyenot'. I cannot print a chart that big to publish. Just the small extract below however speaks for itself and shows just how much business 'Wyenot' brings to the town of Ross-on-Wye and to the rest of the Wye Valley.

Note the 3,799 people who came to 'Wyenot' looking for 'Ross-on-Wye Tourist Information'. This is why I receive an average of at least 2 phone calls per day asking, 'Is that Ross-on-Wye Tourist Information?'.

Taking the 'Wyenot' web site as a whole: Over the same period, 61,242 people looked at 248,042 pages.

More blog below the chart...

I'm afraid that the news is a bit squished into one page this week. This is due to it having been a busy (and not the best) week on a family level and I have not had time to do a lot of individual page making. I did take some time out (on business) though on Sunday to return to.............

Garway Hill: The weather was good on Sunday, so I decided to return to the hill and shoot some more scenes for my short tourism film about the landmark with such stunning views. I met some really nice people at the summit but the filming was not altogether successful. The light was perfect when I first arrived and I set up the camera to shoot a time-lapse panorama. However, a party of school children and their parents came along as I set up and, what would have been a perfect sequence is unusable due to kites being wrapped around the camera and kids standing right in front of the lens. When the party left, I set the sequence up to start again but it was too late. The rain clouds had begun to arrive and the ground was no longer brightly lit by the sun.

Never mind: I still enjoyed the time there and met some very nice people - one lady in particular who asked me to call by at her house on the way home, where she gave me a recently written book on Garway Hill through the ages, to use for research when planning the narration. I apologize for the fact that I am next to useless at remembering names but if you read this (which am sure you will), thank you very much. I will be returning to the hill to do more filming over the next month as I hope to get the film out very soon. I hope we meet again.

The photo below of crepuscular rays beaming down on the Skirrid and the Sugarloaf mountains is just one frame from the one very successful shoot I did manage on Sunday. It only makes a clip a few seconds long but the rays dancing across the hills will be included in the final edit of the film.

Did you note that this page has been looked at 2354 times over the past 2 months? That quite surprised me! Until next week. Have a good'n! :-)

I had to laugh at the press release sent in about Kempley Daffodil Weekend and Hartpury students doing a risk assessment. What is this country coming to? Maybe the organizers are worried that visitors might get badly savaged by marauding bunches of rampant, wild daffodils, hell bent on the destruction of the human race.

I remember when I worked for the insurance company, throughout my 30 years there, the various health and safety officers they employed were always the most boring people one could ever have the misfortune to get cornered and talked at by. They could quite easily write a manual more verbose than 'War and Peace' about the most simple of tasks, such as washing one's hands after taking a pee. At my school, they simply taught us not to pee on our hands.

This week, I have been partaking in a personal project. That of editing my Dad's old cine film. I won't go into that here as it is covered in a separate article - other that is than; look at the slide in Barking Park! (The edit can also be watched above.) It can be seen in the right hand split screen with my little brother Robert playing on it...

The slide was no less than 10 feet tall and sited on a solid tarmac playground. My whole family played on it for years. Yes, we suffered the odd broken bone or nasty black and blue bruise occasionally but we all survived, along with the tens of thousands of other kids who used it over the decades. It was part of growing up to have an arm or leg in plaster for one's school-mates to sign. That slide had been in Barking Park, entertaining generations of kids since time began but it was removed some time in the 1980s for health and safety reasons - it was too big and the ground was too hard.

Perhaps after the general election, we will have a Government which will set aside an island - say the Isle of Wight - to which all health and safety fanatics can retire with their clip boards and live together happily ever after, assessing one another for risks such as sharp pencil leads, the spread of verbal diarrhoea and whether or not their combined weight is enough to make the island sink 3 inches.

It has been a frustrating few days! I am way behind with answering emails at the moment and even setting up ad pages for people. Please forgive me for this - there is a reason. The Wyenot office computer network had been playing up for some time (not the web server) and on Sunday morning, it decided to die completely. Although I have a lot of experience with networking computers, it is from a long time ago, when I worked for 'Ecclesiastical Insurance' and diagnosing network problems is not easy. I spent the whole of Sunday trying to fix it, only to discover (at 2.00am on Monday) that it was the router which had an intermittent fault. Hoping that I could get a straight replacement part, I went shopping for a new one first thing on Monday but I could not get hold of the same one quickly, and I needed it in a hurry. I bought a similar one but it was a different make and the set-up was totally different. I spent the whole of Monday, again until the early hours of the next day, reconfiguring IP addresses until I finally got it working again.

Of course, due to this unexpected problem, I am way behind in doing all of the usual work such as replying to emails and updating 'Wyenot'. The good side is: having to pull all the machinery out to get to network cables, I got the vacuum cleaner into places it cannot usually reach and I now have a relatively tidy office. Can't find anything now but at least it's tidy, with unsightly paperwork, swept under carpets and ghost turds hoovered from computer fans!

The downside is, I had to buy the part form PC World - a shop I hate with a passion due to the incompetent sales assistants with no product knowledge and a keen interest to force you into contracts, no matter how much one objects. I bought an emergency, 'pay as you go' broadband 'dongle' from there on Saturday and if I said, 'I do not want a £40 per month contract!' once, I ended up saying it a dozen times before I got my one-off £39 dongle, which will last me 90 days. The sales assistant nearly ended up with a 'broadband dongle' inserted in her rusty bullet hole. It was my friend, Steve O'Kane explained the reason. It is due to a points system operated for staff in PC World....
'I think here is a promotional system in place at PC world,' he explained. 'Once you get 5 stars you get promoted and transferred to Halfords, and once you get 5 stars there you get promoted to Burger King. If you are a COMPLETE arse they fast track you straight into the Government'.

For the benefit of 'night owl' readers and those in other time zones. The actual 'Wyenot' web server will be down for three hours some time between now and 7.00 am GMT on Wednesday, 10th March. We have not disappeared forever. This is due to maintenance on the London, Docklands servers and hopefully, all will be well again by the time most people usually read this.

Albert Einstein once said: 'Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.'.....

Those who have emailed or telephoned me, obtaining my phone number or email address from 'Wyenot' will have surely noticed the LARGE notice at the top of the contact page explaining that we are not Ross Tourist Information Centre and that we cannot post brochures.

Hardly a day goes by between the months of March and September when I do not answer the phone to at least one person - usually more like three or four times per day, who asks, 'Is that Ross-on-Wye Tourist Information Centre?' I also receive dozens of emails every week asking me to post brochures. The notice on the contact page could not be any more obvious but some people just do not seem to allow this to sink in.

Not all of the 'Ross Tourist Information' phone calls come from the contact page. Most libraries around the country give out my number as Ross Tourist Information and even other Tourist Information Centres give out my number as that of Ross Tourist Information. I had a call this week, where the caller had been given my phone number by Cardiff Tourist Information Centre as that of the 'Ross branch'.

I receive email after email from people like this exact copy and paste - received the other day:
'To whom it may concern, Myself & 3 friends, all now in our early 40's have decided to spend the 30th year since we 1st met in your area. We have booked into the Royal Hotel in Ross on Wye on the 19-20/11/10. The reason for the weekend is not only as a get together, which we intend to make an annual event, but to do / try things we have never done before. As all men originating from Liverpool, our involvement in outdoor activities is quite limited. I am writing to ask if you could send me some useful leaflets of things to do and places to visit during our stay. If you can assist could you please send them to the following address; 12 Cumberland Close......'.

It just drives me batty. Had the person in charge of Ross Tourist Information Centre (when I first started 'Wyenot' in May 2000) not looked at me like I had dropped from the ceiling and landed on eight legs when I went in, told them I was building a web site to put Ross on the world map and offered to share it with them, they would have a presence on the internet now, and be of some use to the town. As it is though, with the world and his wife using the internet to look up absolutely everything, and through their total lack of support and snooty attitude when I first offered them help, nobody knows how to contact them. It's strange how I never seem to be able to find my telephone directory when I'm asked, 'Do you happen to know their telephone number?.

Apart from that all is well It has been a strange kind of week during which I have photographed a wedding in school and filmed a paranormal investigation. I enjoyed both but I'm hoping to get out and start filming the Wye Valley again soon, which is my real passion. Weather permitting, I am planning to film a canoe trip from Hereford to Synonds Yat during the days following Easter, which should help to attract canoeists and families interested in trying canoeing for the first time to the area. I'm not totally stupid. I shall be filming other people canoeing from the luxury of my inflateable boat with outboard motor. Hopefully, drifting most of the time and catching as much wildlife en route as possible. I am really quite looking forward to this - camping out and enjoying what the tourists enjoy. Should be great fun! Until next week. Have a good'n'.

Having been recovering from a self inflicted illness (drinking whiskey with friends on Saturday night) I fell asleep on Sunday afternoon, waking mid way through the time that the BBC's Country File programme about the Wye Valley was being broadcast. My brain was aching and I had completely forgotten that the programme was on. I'm not at all used to drinking alcohol!

Feeling slightly dazed, I made my way to the office. The server monitor computer screen was switched on, and showing that 150 people were currently looking at the 'Yat Rock' page of 'Wyenot' and only slightly fewer looking at the 'Symonds Yat' page and many more looking at the rest of the web site. Thinking that the computer had crashed whilst I was sleeping, I restarted it. It still showed exactly the same figures. Then it dawned on me that the BBC Country File programme was currently being broadcast and that the figures were genuine. The spike was being caused by people watching the programme, liking the look of the Wye Valley and looking the area up on 'Wyenot'.

I then checked to see if it was actually doing any real good and looked at the figures for people looking at the accommodation advertisements on 'Wyenot'. Every single one of them was being hammered with visitors - people looking to book Easter Weekend in Symonds Yat and nearby.

I still have not seen the programme and don't know whether they mentioned us but I suspect the reason for the visitors hitting us is the same one as usual, and the reason why 'Wyenot' works so well as a tourism medium.... Due to the amount of effort put into providing photo, video and news information - which is what makes people find it interesting enough to stay once they find it - 'Wyenot' comes up in both the number one and two slot when people google: 'symonds yat'. The same with people googling: 'ross on wye' or Ross on Wye tourist information'.

People are often under the illusion that if they build (or have built) their own web site, this will immediately work for them but this is simply not true. People searching have to find their web page among hundreds of billions of other web pages out there on the information highway, People looking to visit Ross-on-Wye for example don't search for 'the black giraffe Ross on Wye or 'jo bloggs' coffee shop' - they simply search for Ross on Wye Same applies to Symonds Yat and it is all of the information on the tens of thousands of pages of 'Wyenot' which have accumulated over the past 10 years, which make it the first stop - well above 'Herefordshire Tourist Information' when people want to plan a visit to the area and search the internet first.

Whichever door the visitor enters 'Wyenot' by - be it the Symonds Yat, Ross-on-Wye, Hay Bluff or Arthur's Stone page, or even the 2001 archive news page about Morris Dancing by the Market House, all of the other tourist, accommodation and local shop information is immediately available to them at just one click of the mouse on the buttons at the top of every page.

I have shown three charts below. The top one covers visitors to our 'Yat Rock' page only, over the past 180 days and clearly shows Sunday evening's peak of visitors. The second is an example of just one advertising page (that of the Saracen's Head at Symonds Yat East) showing a peak at the same time. All other accommodation pages showed a similar peak. The third chart shows watchers of my Symonds Yat film. This generally gets watched more of a Sunday but this shows a higher amount of viewers last Sunday, following the 'Country File' broadcast.

I am pretty sure that Symonds Yat is going to be very busy this Easter weekend. Let's hope that the British weather does not let us down. My web server certainly didn't! It coped admirably with the huge increase in traffic, the majority of which all hit it at once.

This week has been a busy one in one way or another. Not from a lots of events point of view but just from keeping on-top of all of the other aspects of maintaining 'Wyenot.com'. This year I am continuing from where I left off when the weather ran out last year, with the general improvement of the tourist information aspects. I added a permanent page covering the Ross-on-Wye Pancake Races both past and present and also made a final edit of my Ross Snow Sequences, covering both the town and down by the River Wye. This can either be watched in the player above or in the separate article.

Last September, I started filming for an information film about Garway Hill but during the autumn, I got into filming autumn in the Forest and then the winter arrived, bringing Christmas and the New Year with it and I got side-tracked. With the return of some nice weather for a day, Tina and I returned to the summit of Garway Hill on Sunday.

Getting to the top was hard work for both of us... the ground was icy and we had to park miles away and so the walk was a long one. Tina suffered with her arthritis and, during the filming of the Pancake Races, I dislodged a piece of cartilage in my right knee and so I struggled to make it to the top with the camera gear. It was a long climb but more than worth it!

If you have never seen the views from Garway Hill, at any time of year, you have missed one of the most spectacular local views it is possible to see. In my opinion, the view from Garway Hill makes me feel, 'is this all there is?', when I return to Yat Rock - and as you know, Yat Rock is one of my favourite places. On Sunday, there was still lying snow for as far as the eye could see and the views of the Skirrid, Sugarloaf and Hay Bluff were just stunning. As was the view of May Hill with Ross and Chase Woods in the foreground. Well worth the struggle to get there and it is, in fact, an easier climb than May Hill.

I managed to get a lot more footage for the film about Garway but I have not finished filming yet. I intend to return in the spring to finish the job. In September, I filmed a couple of local people, Martin and Charlie Vine, describing the views and a month or so back, Charlie phoned me asking where they could find the film. If you read this, Charlie, I have not forgotten you - it's just that the rest of the filming has to be accomplished under the right light conditions and this can take up to a year. I'm hoping to get the film out for April or May. In the mean time, here is a new page about Garway Hill.

Firstly: I would like to thank Mike and Max Williams from New Zealand who called at my house yesterday and left me a beer cooler as a present for keeping them up-to-date with local news on 'Wyenot'. It was a really nice thought and I'm sorry I was not home. I didn't know you were coming and was in town filming the pancake races. Your note said that you are flying back home today, so I guess I won't meet you this time but if ever you find yourselves in Ross again, we must meet.

As I look out of the window, it is currently snowing here, so it will be a few months before I will need my beer cooling but the time will come and I will think of you both. Thanks!

What a great event the return of the Pancake Races turned out to be! Tina wrote the article in the news as I was struggling to get the film and photos out for Wednesday but I can write my bit here......

The event was like entering a time warp. Ross busy in February is a sight to behold and not only that, the event will be visible here to tourists forever. I will make a specific page rather than just the news item and reedit the video more carefully to fit that page when time allows. Events like this make the town appear friendly to those looking here for short breaks and holidays and help all year round - not just on the day.

We seriously struggled to get the article and video out. It was great fun filming it and it nearly killed me physically. My van was being serviced and after all the running from where the start point was visible to the finish line, operating two cameras, I had to walk up the hill home. Tina's 4mph mobility scooter got her home 10 minutes before I managed struggle through the door and my legs are still aching, over 24 hours later.

I took 2,800 photos for the stop motion sequences in the video and all of these needed processing (resizing) before I could begin the video edit. I got this done and just as my computer began to render the final edit, the power failed. An overhead, high voltage line broke and put Foy, Brampton Abbotts and our house in the dark for over 3 hours.

Luckily, I had a generator, just for such emergencies and for a couple of hours (until the petrol ran out), our house was lit up like a Christmas tree in a totally dark neighbourhood. Tina's son, Russell arrived home from a dark street and simply exclaimed: 'IMPRESSIVE!' The petrol would have lasted longer and we could have finished work at a reasonable time, had Tina's other son not nicked the rest of my petrol for his moped.

For a few hours, distant galaxies were visible in the night sky above Three Crosses Road. This alone should go down in history but I didn't have time to get the telescope out.

Anyway, rather than waffle on here - I'm tired and have other stuff to cover today - I'll just say. Yesterday's Pancake Races were great fun, good for the town and next year, the event will take place again on 8th March. I hope you enjoy the coverage!

P.S. Told you I was tired! Having slept for a few hours, I just noticed (and changed) the headline, which had been reading 'What a Great Dan for Ross' for the past 8 hours to, 'Day for Ross'.

This week I changed the look of the front page of 'Wyenot' slightly, adding a series of extra links directly to the important tourism pages, such as those leading to the different types of accommodation available locally and the other information which visitors to the area find most useful. I have also made some of my tourism attracting type videos viewable directly from this page. I have noticed a big difference having done this, in only a few days.

The reason for adding the extra links is that people do not always notice the most obvious things. For example. Somebody phoned me recently and said: 'Last year, you publicized our event for us and it was hugely successful. We are having another this year and I was going to send you the information but I've looked all over 'Wyenot' and can't see a place for 'What's On' events'.

Apart from the individual news item pages, there is a big link to our 'What's On' page on every page of 'Wyenot' - on several thousand pages, in fact. Other than my obvious first thought about this person, this made me think that maybe the links were perhaps 'too obvious' to regular viewers, and that they were not being noticed for this reason - if that makes sense, as in the example picture below. Read the text in that picture out aloud before reading this blog further.

The series of brown buttons at the top of the pages of 'Wyenot' can become just too familiar to regular readers. I bet you read the picture above as 'a bird in the bush' and not, 'a bird in the the bush'. The old cliché, 'A bush in the hand is worth 300 birds in a tree' (something like that) is just too familiar and the brain automatically blanks out the extra 'the'.

It may seem to local people that the videos on 'Wyenot' are accessible from too many paces and that I am over publishing them. I can see from feedback/comments and from the I.P. addreses visiting 'Wyenot' that not many local people take the slightest interest in them, but the same source of statistics tells me that people looking to visit Ross and the Wye Valley most definitely do. I receive hardly any local feedback about the videos at all - but I receive a huge amount from the rest of the UK and indeed, the world.

The reason they have been made viewable from so many pages, including the 'Home Page' (as of last Sunday) is that people enter the 'Wyenot' web site via many different doors. An equally high percentage enter via the Home Page, Ross-on-Wye, Tourist Information, Accommodation pages, and even pages about a specific place such as Arthur's Stone, so many would not notice the videos if they were only available on the page of 'Wyenot'. The video playlists on the various pages are tailored, so that the film about the subject the visitor has most likely been searching for on 'Google' appeares at the front of the list.

I've not much else to say at the moment except, Dont forget the Pancake Races. I'll see you there if you go..... tossers! (Only kidding - it should be a lot of fun!)

I have been saying for years here on Wyenot that the annual pancake races in Broad Street should be revived and at last this is happening. This coming Shrove Tuesday. (For those who are not sure due to modern R.E teaching in English schools, 'Shrove Tuesday' is the feast before Lent, which is a Christian period of fasting, a bit like Ramadan.) Ross in Bloom and the Association of Ross Traders have come together to revive the event. The same should apply to Gala Day, It's a Knockout, the Three legged Race and all of the other events which brought people together as a community in days gone by!

'These events don't attract people into my shop on the day, so Why?' Admittedly, events can actually cause less people to visit shops in some areas of town at the time they they take place - even Carnival Day can have this effect, HOWEVER! >>>

Every day of the year, a huge amount of people planning a short break or a holiday visit 'Wyenot.com' as a result of looking up Ross-on-Wye or the Wye Valley on Google. During the summer months, 'Wyenot' can see as many as 6,000 tourism visitors per day. Every time an event, such as the Carnival, Gala Day or other large community event takes place, we go out and cover it - either with video or photos or both and make that coverage available on 'Wyenot'.

PEOPLE DO LOOK AT THIS COVERAGE. When planning a short break, most people like to visit a place which looks lively, and portrays a good community spirit.

This kind of event portrays that community spirit. People may not come from miles away and go into your shop on the day of the event, but as a result of the town looking like a lively place in general to visit, many come to Ross at a later date, having seen the event coverage here.

I can see from the server log which pages of Wyenot are visited most and which are visited least. For example, a page on 'Wyenot' about an MP, celebrity or even Royalty visiting a hospital fete, no matter who he or she may be - even Princess Anne at the Ryefield Centre, for example attracts very little interest at all. Basically, other than those involved at the time, nobody really gives a damn. Whereas,every year, the 'Wyenot' page about the Carnival will knock the visitor counter needle against the end stop every day for a month and its popularity will continue to a lesser extent ad infinitum.

All of the above aside: these community events are plain good fun and promote the idea of local people talking and getting to know to one another. It is great to see the Pancake Races being revived!

Q.I. Fact: Writing the above made me think about Royalty and something I notice appearing regularly on the server log... The Queen visiting Ross in 2003 page of 'Wyenot' gets visited at least a dozen times every day - even to this day, making it one of the long term favourite pages. I can however see from the 'Google' searches that this is not because people have been looking for the Queen herself - it is ALWAYS, WITHOUT FAIL because the visitor has searched for a photo of her car, and has come across the one I took of it in the John Kyrle High School car park. Absolutely true!

This week I have started to select the material and reedit it into chapters to make my Ross-on-Wye, the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean DVD. So far, I am pleased with the result and the few people who have seen it seem to like what they have seen. I am hoping to get a proof of the video material out to some selected proof watchers within a week or two, prior to having the glass master made for the final replication process. If this can be achieved, a four colour printed DVD, four colour printed case and shrink wrapped product should be available by April - ready for the 2010 tourist season. I am hoping this will raise money to help us with the upkeep of 'Wyenot.com' and also attract further visitors to the area in its own right.

The DVD features: Ross-on-Wye, Seasons in the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean, Symonds Yat, Yat Rock, Standing Stones and Spiritual Places, Hay Bluff and more. It will play through, either as a continuous item (approximately 1 hour) or as individual scenes, selectable by the viewer. I am still looking for places to volunteer selling it for me, for as little financial incentive as possible as the money it raises will help keep 'Wyenot' afloat so that it can continue promoting Ross and the local area.

Whilst January has been a low news month I have noticed that the tourism visitors to 'Wyenot' have started to climb rapidly this year. I have been looking at the stats produced by my server log this week and to my surprise, the curve of people looking at the accommodation pages turned in the upward direction on Christmas Day, with Christmas Eve being the tourism low point. It has been climbing ever since. It seems that people are already trying to arrange breaks and holidays. It is the norm for numbers to drop off slightly in February and the first part of March but I still feel confident that 2010 will be a better year for Ross-on-Wye.

Out of interest, I looked at the figures for viewers of the webcams as well. I have run the viewer graph for just the webcam page below. Look at the peak on the day it snowed! The average of around 1,000 views per day peaked to an amazing 4,929 webcam views in one day on 5th January. The larger peaks either side are 2,303 on 29th December and 2,192 on 13th January.

The Land of Wyenot spoof ad is something I could not resist making. People constantly mention the Royal Caribbean 'Nation of Why Not' television ad to me. The ad doesn't upset me in any way. Idea copying is quite flattering (which is what I'm pretty sure it is). I wanted them to know however that it has not gone unnoticed. I first noticed the Caribbean ads last year, whereas I have been using the name 'Wyenot' to promote our 'Land of Wyenot' for 10 years. I was going to do it properly and try to get some people (and an inflatable sheep) to act out a proper spoof, but in the end I didn't know who to ask, neither would the person my daughter thought might help with the inflatable sheep admit to owning one, so I just ran off a quick job using footage and photos I have filmed/taken in the past.

On the more serious film making theme, I am intending to keep this up during 2010. I have one film, which I began late last year to finish - the weather/light ran out before I finished filming it. It is about Garway Hill. I intend to finish this one in the spring and have plans to go to the Skirrid as well, but I am on the look out for interesting local locations to film - places which will attract visitors to the area. If you know of any, suggestions are welcome.

I actually have a couple of news photocalls this week, so there should be some Ross news coming up in the near future. Until then.........

It was ten years ago in May that I left my job of 30 years with the Ecclesiastical Insurance Office and took my first photo of Ross-on-Wye with the idea of building a web site to give Ross-on-Wye and the Wye Valley a presence on the 'Information Highway'. I did not know that I was going to call it 'Wyenot.com' at the time. That came in December, when I needed to think of a domain name and register it. I registered the domain 'Wyenot.com' on 18th December 2000 and, having spent the summer and autumn months photographing all the streets as well as local events, and designed the basic web site, I uploaded the embryonic stage of what has become the modern 'Wyenot'.

I was not a photographer! Although I had been using SLR film cameras for some years, my photos were, let's be honest - crap! I learned all of my photography skills by trial and error, whilst photographing the streets of Ross using a cheap Kodak 1 megapixel digital camera. I still own that camera. Its outer body is quite literally held together with elastic bands, from where I dropped it so many times. During the summer of 2000, I would go for walks around town, taking photos and when I got home, look at the bad ones and chose a better time of day for the light, then go out and re shoot them. I also made the mistake at first, of deliberately shooting them with as few people and cars visible as possible. This made for a dull looking town.

At night, I would lay in bed reading books about the area and I felt happy. I had lived in Ross since 1976 and loved the town, which was absolute Heaven compared to the rough part of Essex in which I had grown up. I no longer worked for the company I had hated working at for the last 10 years of my 30, since it had started to become a large financial institution rather than a friendly business. I felt happy that I was free and could now do something I really enjoyed.

It was not all roses however. I was used to computers and the internet but, to my amazement, when I tried to tell people what I was doing I discovered that Ross-on-Wye as a town was way behind the rest of the world in this respect. Nobody other than the man who then owned Ross Old Books and Prints and the lady at Vaga House supported my venture, which put £20 into the kitty. I was determined though and kept up the work regardless of what Ross thought of me and eventually - years later, people began to realize what was going on.

As a result of not giving up, nowadays, virtually everybody going on holiday looks up the place they are visiting on the internet and virtually all looking for Ross or the Wye Valley find themselves looking at 'Wyenot.com'.

The page I created covering first events I photographed in 2000 is still available on 'Wyenot'. It can be seen here, complete with the lousy photos I took during my learning curve.

I wrote above about the beginnings of 'Wyenot' because I have not been well this week. I am getting older and following my late nights photographing and filming the snow to get the videos out on time, I ran my body down to the point of total exhaustion and have needed to sleep virtually all day and all night ever since.

I remember - I think in 2002, I photographed a steam engine run for Wyenot. The vintage engines drove a circuit of the town starting and finishing at the Chase Hotel via the Market House and Brookend Street. When photographing that event, I ran that circuit of the town - keeping ahead of the engines for the entire route and taking photos of them. I puffed a bit when arriving back at the Chase but I made it. Nowadays, with ageing bones, I struggle with just walking into town but still enjoy covering events.

Tina started helping with the admin, and still does but since we started running local news regularly, she helps a lot more with updating the news on Wyenot, as well as working at the White Lion. Although younger than me by 7 years, she struggles a lot more than I do with arthritis but we both still enjoy what we do.

As a result of the above getting ill, I have been unable to work much over the past week and this, on top of the fact that is is a dull week in mid January when nothing happens means that there has not been much exciting stuff to put in the news this week. Hopefully, things will start to pick up soon.

Ross seems to be getting off to a good start for the summer with tourism enquiries. The tourism and accommodation pages on 'Wyenot' took off with visitors hitting them almost immediately Christmas Day was out of the way and this is a good sign. I cannot see emails sent but I can see when somebody has clicked an email link on 'Wyenot' and I noticed one day late last week, one place had been sent 9 accommodation enquiry emails in one day.

I still feel very positive about this year: and for the first time ever, for us as well as for the town of Ross. More businesses in town at last seem to be supporting us and this will help the whole town prosper. I do however just worry a bit about the future of 'Wyenot' when Tina and I are no longer able to keep up. I need to start thinking of how I can keep it alive when we are no longer able to work. Maybe one of our offspring will eventually show an interest but so far, this has not happened. This week of feeling so rough has brought this home to me a bit but I'm on the mend now and hoping we have a few years left in us yet.

It has been a very quiet week for local news. The snow seems to have kept everybody at home but I have been doing quite a bit of general maintenance on the other aspects of Wyenot in preparation for this year's tourist season and beyond.

We are beginning to get a few 'What's Ons' coming in now. Don't forget to send in info about events planned for this year! The 'What's On' page of Wyenot is viewed by thousands, before they come to Ross and works very well. All you have to do is use it.

I have to say that I was just overwhelmed by the response to my recent night time snow falling film. A few local people passed comment but what surprised me was that I received feedback from the whole planet within a day of uploading that film. People writing to me via email or leaving comments on You Tube, Vimeo and Facebook - absolutely all of them said how much they enjoyed it. I also received lots of 'how did you do that?' enquiries. Over the various servers, the film was watched over a thousand times in less than a week. Just sometimes, something works out just right. This time, I guess it must have been the 'right kind of snow'...

Thank you all very much for your comments and I hope you enjoy the arty snow film of this week! Watch it in the player above or on the page. This one is definitely best watched in full screen (button on the right side of the progress bar), with the volume up. Despite being in internet standard HD, the MP4 compression removes a lot of picture quality from the videos on Wyenot. I only wish you could see the uncompressed HD versions as I can, direct from hard disc, on our 32 inch Sony TV. Maybe one day, I will be able to output them on a Blu Ray disc in 1080i HD.

I watched BBC News 24 on Wednesday. The news was all about the current cold spell and on the programme, a man from the Met Office was asked: 'Do you think there is a cycle beginning to show up following the cold periods of 1963, 1981 and 2010?'.

He answered, 'No. The cold spells occur totally randomly' (or words to that effect).

I thought: 'You idiot!'

This is what I wrote, and published here, on Wyenot, back on the 3rd December 2008:

'I am going to stick my neck out a little here and predict that in the very near future, possibly even this year [referring to 2009], maybe next, we are in for a very long and cold winter. I am not a weather expert. Neither am I a politician. I am basing my prediction on my basic knowledge of astronomy and the things I see around me.

I will probably get shot for this but I personally believe that global warming has little to do with human activity on the planet Earth. Global warming is most definitely occurring, helped on by destruction of the rain forests but it would still occur, to a very slightly lesser degree, if there was not a human being alive on Earth. Look at the planet, Venus. It is very similar in size to Earth and just slightly closer to the sun. Never a human has lived there yet the temperature on the surface can melt a spacecraft within minutes of landing due to the runaway greenhouse effect.

Global warming is being used as a political lever to gain votes for politicians and to add tax onto just about everything. In the same way that the word 'organic' adds 50p to the price of carrots - a trend helped on by the same people who join the Green Party, buy disposable nappies for their babies and then take their bottles to the bottle bank in large, four wheel drive vehicles. I'm getting carried away a bit here but then I haven't got a grant, or votes to lose... ...

I base my winter prediction on the solar wind. The sun goes through an 11 year cycle of sun spot maxima and minima, which does effect the weather to a certain extent. It also effects other things - the propagation of HF radio waves, for example, but the 11 year cycle is a cycle within other cycles. Some of these, we have not been monitoring the sun long enough yet to predict.

The solar wind streams out from the sun, reaching the outermost regions of the solar system. It protects the solar system from harmful cosmic rays, such as gamma rays. It also varies in strength. Bursts of solar wind can be seen from Earth when they come into contact with Earth's magnetic field. They can be seen as aurora borealis at the north pole and aurora australis at the south.

Currently, the solar wind has virtually stopped. It is at its lowest for 40 years. Those who are old enough will remember how much colder the winters were in the 1960s, in particular 1963. In 1947 the River Thames froze over during a really harsh winter (I don't remember that one) and so on back into history.

My personal belief is that this is a cycle, following the trends of the solar wind. I do not know this for sure. I am guessing but it is a guess based on my limited knowledge of science. We shall have to wait and see...'

2010 - Quod Erat Demonstrandum

I am only joking of course! (Perish the thought!) However! It may seem a long way off but I am already preparing Wyenot so that it helps local business during the run-up to next Christmas. This was the reasoning behind making the generic Christmas film and covering the New Year celebrations with film.

It may seem pretty silly putting a page about Christmas and the New Year up now but I know the way that search engines such as Google work. I added a new Christmas and New Year general tourism page to Wyenot today, which is linked (as shown below) from the 'Ross-on-Wye, Tourist Information and Places of Interest' pages of Wyenot. Hopefully, this will aid local tourism next Christmas and help all local businesses.

We entered a new decade on a 'Blue Moon', and not only that, a blue moon which was partially eclipsed by the earth's shadow. I am extremely interested in the science of astronomy but I think 'astrology' is bullshit. A lot of people confuse the two subjects...

However! I am going to make an exception in this instance - purely from a psychological point of view. I think that Ross-on-Wye is beginning to hit the upward trend following the recession and that 2010 is going to be an extremely good and prosperous year for the town. I've absolutely made up my mind - that it will be for us here on a personal level.

I have never been good at saying, 'Yes - but doing this is how I earn my living and you will have to pay for it'. My whole life so far seems to have been a series of favours for friends.

My New Year's Resolution is that I am going to continue supporting the town of Ross-on-Wye as best I can, and also helping friends, But. I am also going to start looking after my own interests and those of my family.

Last year, somebody who had watched my video films called me and asked, 'I wonder if you can help me. I promised to film a family wedding but there is too much wind noise on the footage. Can you help me sort it out?' I spent virtually a whole day with this person sat by my side and edited his video clips into a film. I like editing my own video but just imagine, a whole day of looking at somebody else (whom I do not even know) getting married on poor video film and trying to sort it out into a reasonable edit. I finished during the evening, loaned the person a 4 gig memory stick to take it home on and breathed a sigh of relief. Return of the card was promised within a week.

A few weeks of no contact went by, then the person phoned me: 'I'm having trouble putting the wedding film onto DVD - my computer keeps crashing. Can you help. I was eating my lunch when he rang. 'I'm busy at the moment,' I replied, 'but if you come round in an hour, I'll see what I can do.' I do not know whether the words 'busy at the moment' offended him, or what. But I then waited in all afternoon for him to come round with my memory stick, not starting anything with the computer because I needed it to write his DVDs and he did not show. One and a half days wasted, for no payment and the loss of a memory stick, which I went to use the other day but it was not there. This is the kind of thing, my New Year's Resolution is going to stop - the: 'You're a musician - would you help me move the piano?' type of stuff.

I have not been a fan of Christmas since a day (which I can remember as clearly as though it were yesterday) but which took place when I was 7 years old. I was walking along Crouch Avenue in Barking, Essex with my Dad, having just visited Nan, and I told Dad what I had asked 'Father Christmas' to bring me. 'There's no such person as Father Christmas,' replied Dad. 'You are old enough to know the truth now son.' My Mum (God rest her soul) went absolutely ballistic at him and when I told my friends at school, all but Clive Kirby, who also knew the truth, looked at me in astonished disbelief.

New Year on the other hand is much more my thing. It is a day that, despite having to remain sober myself as I have to drive the camera equipment, I enjoy - watching the town as a whole having fun. Everybody is friendly and I just love getting out there amongst friends. It was very tiring but I enjoyed making this year's New Year video, which can be seen below.

On New Year's Day, whilst I was on the Rope Walk, waiting for bagpiper, Alan Harrison, who turned out on a cold, frosty morning specially to both play and recite 'Auld Lang Syne' for my film (below), A man approached me and asked, 'Are you Alan, from Wyenot?' He then told me that he was from Canada and visiting Ross, and that for the past 7 years he has been coming to Ross and keeps up-to-date with the town via 'Wyenot'. I have been watching the statistics on my server log over the Christmas period - people are already beginning to look up local places to visit and stay on 'Wyenot' from a tourism point of view and I was already beginning to feel happy, look forward to spring and generally more confident for the future, but this little introduction really brightened my day and inspired me to keep working on 'Wyenot'....

2010 is going to be a good year!