Change

It has been an eventful week this week, in many ways. Following discussions last Thursday, a couple of the multimedia tour routes have had to be dropped - the volume of work involved and the extremely limited time and budget indicate that four routes will simply not be possible. In total the planned walks took around 8 hours to complete (with 3 - 4 hours content potentially) and we only actually have around 1 hour of walking with around 30 minutes of content to play with so some drastic alterations were needed. It has been decided that the Great Field tour is the best one to use, as it covers long-lost medieval strip-field systems, agriculture, shipping, the railway, village life and changes to industry and life in general for Brauntonians over the centuries. In addition, we'll still be using the short Saunton tour but it needs some work as at the moment it is aimed heavily at school groups and it'll need to appeal more to the general public, in light of these changes. It's such a shame that some of the Burrows management will have to be lost but it will certainly be included in other ways. We're starting to write the script for both tours on Thursday this week and should hopefully have some rapid progress over the following week.

In addition to the multimedia devices and the work that needs doing for them, other elements of the project continue to evolve. I'm currently ploughing through some funding paperwork that needs to be completed before tomorrow and working my through a list as long as my arm of people who need contacting, etc. I must admit, things are not particularly cheerful here at the moment, the project feels like a mountain to climb this week and we're at a really critical point in the schedule, so the pressure's on. In addition, my long-suffering Mum's in hospital again (hi Mum) so that's weighing on my mind and I'm not particularly comforted by the fact that it is apparently the worst week of the year - according to psychologists in the UK, levels of misery officially peak this week. Their theory is based on the following formula: awful weather + (monthly salary - debt) x (holiday lows x resolutions broken) / (low motivation /x need to take action). Yes, no wonder things look a little bleak!

The high point this week has been the appointment of a web-designer for the project. The selection process was exhaustive (and exhausting!) and resulted in three interviews taking place on Monday of this week. It was a long day with some difficult decisions but I am pleased to announce that Pete Urwin of Metazoa is our new project partner - http://www.metazoa.co.uk/
He has some exciting ideas and I'm really looking forward to working with him to produce something very special. More about the web-site soon.

Also this week I was surprised to find my name in the local paper. See the item here. I'm honoured that JB Barden feels it necessary to defend me though actually they're not quite accurate in what they say - the letter seems to demonstrate in more ways than one that effective communication would solve a lot of problems! It is lovely though to know that one local resident acknowledges my existence, perhaps my local pr efforts haven't gone unnoticed after all...! In reference to their point about the New Burrows Visitor Centre I can confirm that a feasibility study about it has now been completed and will be published soon. The study concentrated on many issues but a main one was planning and the consultant who wrote it took great pains to ascertain the planner's point of view, recognising that their approval would be essential from the start. There is as yet no guarantee that such a centre will be built and, if it is, no decision as yet as to it's purpose. Options under consideration at the moment are: visitor centre, education centre, a combination of both or something completely different.

A further highlight to the week was finding out that I'd won the County Council's staff competition. I had a friendly email advising me of the fact and asking where the prize should be sent, but there was no mention of what the prize is so that'll be interesting! One other silver lining is the fact that my other half has been at home this week, so I've had the luxury of arriving home to a warm and cosy house with dinner in the oven and the wine chilling, bliss! It can't last so I'm making the most of it while I can.

Well, back to the grindstone for me. I hope you'll take a moment to complete my poll and, if you like, suggest future polls for this blog. If you're local to Braunton and have some spare time on Friday (1st Feb), pop along to the Discover North Devon day at Castle Hill in Filleigh, it should be good.

Rainy Days

Greetings! I hope you like the video bar I've added, there's the usual films of people rolling down the dunes but also some interesting aerial film of Saunton Sands and, most impressively, the film of the Hercules landing on the beach, goodness only knows how these people managed to film it without being cleared away by military personnel but anyway, here is it for your viewing pleasure! If it's not immediately obvious on the video bar to the right, go to YouTube and type C130 Hercules Beach Landing.

So then, this week has been very rainy and it hasn't helped one bit with my route planning. The routes for the multimedia tours have already been identified but I'm now in the process of mapping them accurately, creating descriptions, taking photos along the way and deciding where the 'hot spots' for the gps-driven interactivity should be. The rain hasn't helped my photography and most of them have come out dark thanks to a menacing sky but some are ever so slightly artistic. Tess (the dog) and I walked the Great Field route yesterday and, once I've successfully transferred those photos to my computer (fingers crossed!) I'll just need to pop outside and take a few more then I'm done. I'm meeting our lady from Node this week, who are providing the multimedia devices, and we'll walk the awkward parts together to iron out any issues that are foreseen at this stage. Then it's on to the production stage and a lot of frenzied activity between now and the end of March.

I'm encouraged by the involvement of the Biosphere Schools and together we plan to do an educational tour at Saunton. It'll be relatively short but will, I think, be of great interest to everyone, not just school children. That means there should be four tours altogether - the Great Field, Braunton Marshes, the south end of Braunton Burrows and Saunton.

Work continues on the web-site too, I'm hoping to have appointed a web-designer by the end of the month. I have some content ready to give them, so they have something to work on, but I desperately need more content - any contributions most welcome!

So, I'm off to take the last of my photos, finish my tour descriptions and then, after making some phone calls, settle into some funding paperwork, which will enable me to claim the final payment from the AONB Sustainable Development Fund. I'm feeling quite pleased with myself, having arrived at work at 7.45am yesterday and today. I've even taken up running in the evenings! Will probably have an evening off this evening though, the other half is working late so I won't get a peaceful night's sleep and I'm planning a LOT of walking tomorrow and I'm not sure my poor legs will last to the end of the week!

Chat soon!

Catch Up

Hello again! I've had a busy time during the last few days, well the last week in fact has been crazy. After an IT meltdown late last Thursday afternoon I spent 2 hours on a helpline, although thankfully sorted the problem of my over-full inbox for now. I then had to get up early on Friday to send a heap of emails that were previously stuck, before commencing on a major house-moving exercise! After an impossible amount of lugging, heaving, shunting and much toe-stubbing from Friday to Monday evening we had successfully moved house and even managed to congratulate ourselves on the smoothness of this move, we've got rather too used to moving in recent months.

So, back to work on Tuesday I had a mountain of emails waiting for me and spent most of the day getting to grips with everything again, aided in no small way by gallons of coffee. Wednesday was spent dodging the showers and re-walking the routes I walked last week in an effort to re-take the photos I lost. Thankfully they're all safely saved on my computer now, which is a relief. I'm off soon to a Biosphere Schools Meeting but will return tomorrow to attack the pile of notes I have left myself and make some sort of order out of them. And that completes my week. The week seems to have flown by with very little real progress being made but I'm hoping that having spent some time addressing admin issues I can launch ahead again next week and make much more of a dent in the workload.

Apologies for the lack of excitement this week, no doubt something more readable will happen shortly!

Argh!

Well, I spent all of yesterday afternoon out walking and, as I went, taking photographs to complete my tour route descriptions. I started at the beach and, because I hadn't planned to be outside, didn't have any outdoor clothing so had to suffer the ravages of an icy wind - needless to say my hands were totally numb by the time I'd finished. I nearly went straight back to the office for a nice cup of tea but persevered and went on to do a less windy but almost as cold walk around the Marshes. My task duly complete, I hurried back to the office in the falling dark, with the intention of downloading my photos before I went home. I'm always impressed with the technology at my finger-tips and watched as the 40 or so photos were beamed invisibly from my phone to my computer - worked perfectly last time - but alas! When I went to find them the folder was empty and, guess what, so was my phone. I have no idea what happened to them but it seems I'll have to do all that walking all over again. I'll try to avoid the blisters (wholly inappropriate footwear yesterday) and bashing my knee on a stile again!

Not to be beaten, I am launching into today's work schedule with a smile :) I can only suppose that yesterday's walk (and the repeat walk next week) will do wonders for my health!

Another busy day

Well, another busy day at the Explore Braunton office. I'm currently struggling to get maps to save in a legible format and this is pretty annoying as it's central to the project and should in theory be a relatively simple operation. Have also discovered that I'm missing information for all of my tour routes, which means that I'll need to go for three relatively short walks to take photos where I am currently missing some and one jolly long walk to make notes that I omitted to take last time, though thankfully I did take photos on that occasion. I last did the long route the week before Christmas, on a rare sunny day, and it was so beautiful and I was so enjoying myself I must have completely forgotten to make notes. I snapped happily away with my camera and regularly stopped to admire the view but, having sat down today to write up the directions, I find I totally forgot to note them down - duh!

Otherwise things are quite peaceful, I have more contacts to follow up and various bits of admin to do but nothing exciting to report. Have you been watching Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's programmes about free range chickens? I saw the second part last night and hope to watch the final part tonight. I thought I was already well-acquainted with the issue of free range vs. battery chickens but the programme did make me think and I hope it'll make the rest of the country think too. With little individual effort we can turn the industry around... see the Chicken Out web-site (link below) for more details and let me know if you'd like me to grace these pages with pics of my own chickens, lol!

Progress

I've had a flash of inspiration - the West Somerset Railway has recently restored a steam locomotive that is named after Braunton - SR 4-6-2 no 34046 Braunton to be precise. It used to run on the Barnstaple to Ilfracombe line and information about it would make an interesting addition to the web-site. I've duly asked the experts there if they would mind contributing something to the project and congratulated myself for my good idea.

I've also been heartened by the community spirit in Braunton today, had the offer of some really worthwhile help and firmed up my budget - all is well!

Hello!

Well, here's my opening entry. To set the scene, I was appointed as Project Officer during September 2007. I have twelve months to complete my project and a list of objectives to fulfil within that time. It can be quite a daunting prospect but a really exciting one too. The only thing panicking me at the moment is that I've been here for three months already and don't seem to have got an awful lot done. It's true though that when I look back at what I have achieved, there is more than I'd first imagined. I've certainly got to know the area much better, I've made a great many local contacts and had an abundance of ideas - the challenge now is to make it all a reality, to produce some tangible outputs that work.

My main priorities at the moment are:
a) to plan and start producing content for some handheld multimedia devices. This can include anything, text, photos, animations, archive film, audio clips, etc. I've already identified the routes that the multimedia tours will follow but need to specify what will be said and where, with which illustrative material alongside. I need to write a script and have it read by a suitable narrator, much much work involved here and it needs to be done by the beginning of April - eek!
b) to appoint a web-designer and develop a web-site. This should be relatively easy in itself but the content for the web-site is another thing. I've had some excellent help from a few local contributors but many more are needed to enable the content to be widely varied and therefore more interesting.
c) to recruit volunteer walk guides and hold workshops for local businesses, to promote the economic benefits of my project and Braunton as a whole
d) to start working on the self-guided walks leaflets that will be downloadable from the web-site

I'm therefore going to go and continue with my work. Today's tasks are to produce some info for the North Devon AONB web-site and then continue with writing out the tour routes, including photographs to show where the route goes. I'm missing some photos at the moment but can spend a day later in the week walking the routes, my dog will adore that - she's currently curled up at my feet dreaming of imaginary walks!