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By viv, 11 May, 2012 8:00 am

In the guest post below, Louise Campbell of 2011 GeoVation Challenge winner, Foodnation, announces the launch of their free Android app, so now you can find your local produce wherever you are.

Foodnation are hugely  excited to announce the launch of our FREE Android app. The app can be used on all Android phones and tablets, and producer locations and can be accessed directly via our postcode field, using GPS from the homescreen, without having to login, making the app super easy to use and launch from anywhere.

It has been hugely enjoyable and a great privilege to design the Foodnation Android application. The opportunity to invest the funds which GeoVation awarded us inspired us to produce an accessible and elegant application that we hope will be well received by new and existing and future app users.

Continue reading “Foodnation launch Free Android app” »

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By viv, 10 May, 2012 8:00 am

THE world might be getting smaller, but according to a recent news story one in 10 children cannot find the UK on a map

Thanks to our GeoVation winner, MaxiMap pupils are being given the chance to brush up on their geographical skills with their enormous floor-sized maps which can be used as a teaching tool to expand pupils’ knowledge of the world.

Ann Jones of MaxiMap said “I was head of history at Cefn Hengoed and there was a lack of knowledge among the pupils, they didn’t know where the countries were. I spoke to teachers in other disciplines, in things like geography and English and they found the same. People would say to pupils ‘somewhere to the north of Scotland’ and they wouldn’t know where it was.”
So Ann commissioned a giant floor map of the British Isles and took it into the classroom to highlight cities where civil disturbances took place in the 19th century for her Year 10 GCSE pupils. Ann then joined forces with Llanelli printing company Heritage Screen Print and set up MaxiMap, a partnership which has seen the business go from strength to strength. In 2010, MaxiMap won the GeoVation Challenge .

Current new teaching aids include a periodic table and a political map of the world too. Around 200 of the giant floor maps have been sold to schools and companies, including 50 to CAA Publishing in Aberystwyth, who purchased them with a grant from the Welsh Government and provided them to schools across Wales. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust recently ordered nine of the maps to be used in their educational programmes, and Ramblers Wales have purchased a map for events relating to the opening of the Wales Coastal Path.

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By viv, 9 May, 2012 8:00 am

While we’re waiting for the Judging Panel to decide which ideas will be short-listed and invited to the Wales Coast Path GeoVation Camp on 22-24 June I thought it would be good to use the OS OpenSpace plugin created by one of our developers to see an update of where the 62 exciting ideas entered on the ’ How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?’   GeoVation Challenge were from. Following the links within the markers to find out more about them.

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By viv, 8 May, 2012 8:00 am

Thank you all for your great ideas on the GeoVation Challenge ‘How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path? ’.  There were 62 ideas posted between 14 March and 2 May 2012 and 732 people registered on the GeoVation Community during that time – which is fantastic!

The next stage is for the judges to start reading all of your ideas and select a shortlist of the best of these which will be announced on 29 May. The shortlisted ideas teams will be invited  to a GeoVation Camp in Cardiff  over the weekend of 22-24 June.

You can find out who the judging panel are below:

The Judging Panel Chair is:

Andy Middleton – a social entrepreneur,designer and facilitator who helps leaders and teams in business,  government and community build resilience for sustainability.He uses ecology, psychology and action learning to help people connect what they see, know and feel to ways of doing things that are lighter on, and inspired by nature. He is Founder Director of the TYF Group, a well established and innovative adventure, education and leadership business based in St Davids, Pembrokeshire. His imagination is caught by working on city and country-scale sustainability projects and by the creative retreat centre he’s building that overlooks islands and ocean on the western edge of Wales.

Andy will be joined by:

Continue reading “Wales Coast Path Challenge – time for the judging to begin” »

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By viv, 4 May, 2012 8:00 am

Thanks to everyone who entered the Wales Coast Path GeoVation Challenge.   While your waiting to find out whether you’ve been shortlisted you might be interested in this guest  post in which Steve Webb explains why he is planning to walk the entire new Wales Coast Path this summer and will be taking the baton from Arry Beresford-Webb (aka Dragonrun1027)  when she returns to Cardiff on 5 May

This summer I’ve decided to walk all 870 miles of the new Wales Coast Path from Chepstow in the south to Chester in the north. The decision was made after I walked a big chunk of the 365-mile South West Coast Path last year and in the knowledge that the coast path was due to open in 2012. It seemed like a logical objective.

While I’m walking the path I will  raise money for my School’s Parent Teachers Association (PTA) to help build a new Eco classroom for the Outdoor Education department which would be energy efficient and ecologically sound, and to provide a more simulating classroom to help teach our pupils.

The coastal path isn’t just about walking 870 miles, is about everything that the Welsh Coast has to offer, this was highlighted in one of the GeoVation problem statements: Not just a path. How does the path enable other activities for different demographics such as photography, writing, water sports and bird watching? Walking will not always be the main interest of potential users, so leading with other activities to particular demographic groups could increase visitors.

Continue reading “Wales Coast Path – The Dragon Walk” »

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By viv, 3 May, 2012 8:00 am

Thank you for all the ideas you have entered our ‘How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?’ GeoVation Challenge which is now closed. In the guest post below Jane Davidson who is  President of Ramblers Cymru discusses how her idea for the Wales Coast Path began, the benefits it can bring and how your innovative ideas benefit coastal communities.

Dylan Thomas’ most famous poem, ‘Under Milk Wood’, starts, ‘To begin at the beginning’. Somehow, it’s a lot easier to say than do.  I have been asked many times about when I first had the idea for a Welsh coast path. It would be great to be able to trace it back to one moment, but life isn’t like that; like many ideas, it took years in gestation, although it was helped by two critical events on the way – first, at the age of 16, walking the Pembrokeshire Coast Path with school friends and seeing my first dolphins; the second was the brilliant decision of two Cardiff youth clubs to walk around Wales for International Youth Year in 1985.

Ideas, brilliant or otherwise, get nowhere without a plan, and the plan did leap forward quite suddenly in 2006. I was in the kitchen of Rhodri Morgan, the then First Minister of Wales, a keen walker and dolphin watcher. We were debating what to put in the manifesto for the next elections. Ramblers Cymru were calling for greater access to the coast so my suggestion of an ‘all Wales Coast Path’ was a logical extension of that. What I didn’t know on that day was that Rhodri would then ask me to deliver on it.

Continue reading “To begin at the beginning…” »

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By viv, 2 May, 2012 8:00 am

We’ve had some really great ideas entered on our GeoVation Challenge ‘How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?’ which was launched on 14 March with a share of £125,000 for best ideas.

The exciting challenge has seen a steady flow of ideas being submitted all aiming to better connect communities, businesses and visitors through the application of geography, mapping, innovation and expertise.

For instance, one popular idea is for a Walkers alert companion – a smart phone App and website to provide information on the nearest located medical support centre or offering  first aid support from a volunteer network of first aiders.

Continue reading “Last chance to enter the Wales Coast Path GeoVation Challenge” »

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By viv, 1 May, 2012 8:00 am

In the guest post below,  Terry Jackson, a member of the Location Wales report team, explains how he thinks micro-destination marketing could be used to address some of the problems along the Wales Coast Path.

Micro-destination marketing on the worldwide web is a solution to key problems associated with accessible information, market communications and branding. It enables a level of market penetration unheard of before the Internet and we’re still only scratching the surface of possibilities that the semantic web will deliver.

It enables even the smallest Welsh community to shine in the tourism cosmos; deliver its unique selling proposition to world markets; gain sales in a matter of mouse clicks at truly affordable costs; take enormous community pride in the ability to do so, and be part of the national Wales brand.

Continue reading “Wales Coast Path communities shine with micro-destination marketing” »

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By viv, 26 April, 2012 8:00 am

In the guest post below, Gwenda Owen of Ramblers Cymru explains how the mass trespass 80 years ago on Kinder Scout has made the new Wales Coast Path possible and how the GeoVation Challenge may help people to engage with it.

This week here at the Ramblers we’re celebrating the mass trespass that took place 80 years ago on Kinder Scout. As someone relatively new to Ramblers  I’m only just beginning to truly appreciate the ‘battles’ that have been fought to secure the right to walk on paths that I’ve enjoyed and on the whole taken for granted.

Had the working people of Greater Manchester and Yorkshire not risked imprisonment in challenging the restrictions imposed by many landowners it is unlikely we would be celebrating the opening of the Wales Coast Path on May 5^th.  The account taken from Ramblers.org.uk highlights the steps which lead us to where we are today.

‘It is widely agreed that the Mass Trespass was a pivotal event in the fight for walkers’ access rights. A few weeks later, 10,000 ramblers – many more than the few hundred at Kinder Scout – took part in an access rally at Winnats Pass, near Castleton. A further mass trespass also took place on the Bradfield Moors in South Yorkshire in September 1932.

Less than three years after the Mass Trespass, the Ramblers Association was created from the National Council of Ramblers’ Federations. Although the Federation had not endorsed the Mass Trespass, the newly formed Ramblers Association set about lobbying for access to hills, for the creation of long distance paths and national parks and for better protection of public rights of way.

In 1949, following the disruptions of World War II and a period of hard-fought campaigning by the Ramblers, the National Parks and Countryside Act was passed. Foundations were laid for access rights to open country, for the creation of national parks and long distance paths and for rights of way to be surveyed and recorded on maps.

The events at Kinder Scout on 24 April 1932 were also instrumental in the Peak District becoming the first designated national park in 1951. The Pennine Way, which runs north for 268 miles from the Peak District all the way to the Scottish Borders, was the first long-distance footpath to be opened in 1965.

The Mass Trespass also had far-reaching implications for access, culminating in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 which granted the right to roam in open countryside in England and Wales. This was followed by the Land Reform Act 2003 which granted statutory access rights to almost all land in Scotland, making it one of the most walker-friendly countries in Europe.’

 Wales Coast Path

The Ramblers and others continued to campaign, negotiate and undertake practical work and we are now able to ‘beat the bounds’ of our nation by walking the Wales Coast Path .   This is what we’ll be doing on May 5^th on our Big Welsh Coastal Walk when we’ll be joined by 1000’s of people. The full potential of the Wales Coast Path to have an enormously positive impact on both local communities and visitors has yet to be realised and we hope that the GeoVation Challenge will prove to be one of the key motivators in engaging people in all that it has to offer.

Gwenda Owen
Community Engagement Officer
Ramblers Cymru

If you would like to enter the GeoVation Challenge and be in with a chance to win a slice of £125,000 in funding then hurry, the closing date is 12 noon on 2 May2012