Suddenly everyone has the same idea :-)

It appears to be some sort of societal thing, someone has a great idea for something called a telephone and it turns out three others have also had the same idea.

Tav over at the WFA mentions a possible tourist trail. I had similar thoughts for Hartlebury Common. The trouble is there's a lot of markers denoting a trail through the Common, but unless you go with the intent of walking it when you stumble across one you have no idea at what point you are on the route, how long the route is, or even what you're supposed to be looking at. I even went so far to sketching out a template for the new markers (according to the time-stamp on 11 Jan 07) It ended up nowhere when I realised that each marker would have to be made individually rather then a simple batch stamped out and thus would simply cost a lot more money then the current set.

It did however set of another train of thought regarding the Public Realm Design Guide for Stourport pages 71 and 72 (a big joke being that several of the buildings they mention no longer exist) combined with the findings that more people need to be drawn into the town away from the riverside. "Nobody", I thought "Is going to start a walk unless they know roughly what they'll be seeing, how long it'll take, and the conditions of the walk" Likewise the assumption, as with Hartlebury Common, is that people will start at the start and already know what they're doing. That assumption needs to be killed dead. That may have worked in ye olden days when families would turn up with an itinerary of things to do, now you have to go with the flow. Grab their attention at every point of the trail, let them know up front what they'll be doing, and provide as much information as possible at every point. Of course that means money too; I must admit with the bridge, skate-park etc. it slipped my mind until Tav popped up with it.

Now his site gets a lot more attention then mine, so yay go for it. We could do with a set-up in all three of the major towns It's a shame that for Kidderminster to get to some of the churches involves ugly underpasses and busy roads (though it might incent some spending) Link them up and you can start on the church trail, then hop onto the canal trail then meet up back at the church trail before returning to where you started.

I'm not overly fond of the 'paint a line' technique. Although paint has a much longer life in pedestrian situations it still gets patchy, and attempting to remove it if things need changing tends to leave a ghost impression behind. Coloured bricks might be better, however in both cases I think people would be too busy looking down and not around; and, as with cars, crowds start to obscure things. Signposts may be better provided they're made visible from a distance, the current dark red colour of Kidderminster would be of no use. They have the advantage that they can contain more information; a "Church Trail 1 mile walk 4/10" is easily fitted along with an information board. The second advantage is that signposts already exist in many areas of all three towns and that it fits in with existing path signing techniques.

Points of interest between directional indicators could be displayed with visible information boards either on a wall or fitted to a bollard or such. I'm not suggesting anything technical (though interactive boards would be fun) simply a printed sheet under glass would suffice.

The main point again is you can't expect people to wander around with a tourist information booklet, you have to tell them there and then what they're looking at and what they will be looking at. It also must must be a loop that if possible doesn't just lead them back down the same route, but on the other side of the same pavement. "We've been here before, are we going the right way?"

Hmm okay for Kidderminster a very short route

Town Hall, down Weavers Wharf over the bridge, down to the canal, back into Weavers Wharf, along the shop frontage, hmm I wouldn't go down Pitts Lane as it's butt-ugly so cross over at the zebra, behind Crown House, over the pelican, need a zebra here to get to Baxter's church, along to the New Meeting House, on to the Lloyds building and then back to the Town Hall along the shops.

By no means ideal, but it would show off both old and new and hopefully distract from Crown House.