New Ashfield Visitor's Guide

The Ashfield Visitor's Guide for 2007 was launched last Friday and is now available for download from the Ashfield District Council website.

Select to download the guide and find more about Ashfield Tourism on the Council's website.

A group of twenty invited guests including representatives of local accommodation providers, tourist information points, tourism officers and owners or managers of local tourist attractions, joined Chairman of Ashfield District Council Cllr Edward Holmes and his wife Hilda at Teversal Manor for the launch.

The guests were shown how the guide illustrates that Ashfield offers a good tourism package which is attractive to all ages and interest groups. Special thanks were expressed to all those volunteers who work hard across the district to help run the country parks, cafes and the Visitor Information Point. Select to read the full media release for the launch.

I must admit, when I started working for Ashfield District Council this was a part of the East Midlands I'd not been to before. The attractions of the Peak District to the North West, or Sherwood Forest to the North East, or the large cities of Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield circling it, made Ashfield District more an anonymous place to drive through to get to somewhere else. How much I missed!

One of the delights of Ashfield is that yes, it is handy for getting to City shopping and night-life, and to the tourist honey-pots of The Peak and Sherwood, but it also has a charm of its own. You don't need to travel far out of the small Ashfield towns to find yourself in unspoilt countryside. And even in the towns there are areas of open green space and parks to enjoy. My particular favorite is to walk down to Portland Park on a lunchtime and enjoy its tamed wildness.

Also, if you have any interest in local history, Ashfield is seeped with it. For example, the industrial heritage of coal mining is ever-present. The last collieries closed only in the past ten years and the memories linger on in Ashfield folklore and pride. To the right is a photo I took of a striking six metre high statue of a miner sited at Station Road, Hucknall, next to a new Tesco supermarket and the park-and-ride for high-tech trams into Nottingham (click on it for much bigness).

I won't spoil your sense of discovery (or make this blog entry unfeasibly long) by going into local history further. I'll just mention the poet Byron and his daughter proto-computer programmer Ada Lovelace, the writer D.H.Lawrence, Teversal Manor and it's Tutankhamen connection, Felley Priory, Victorian Prize Fighter Ben Caunt, Bodyline cricketer Harold Larwood, and the grave of the Gypsy King in Selston Parish churchyard. The new Visitor Guide is a good starting point to go on to discover about all these and more.