Melksham River Festival ... see other thread at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=14538.0

More of a rally that a festival ... in that the number of outside people coming to see (from outside the boating community, local or otherwise) isn't large.   But a good number of boats and people having a good time.

I was surprised and initially happy to see a "Connecting Wiltshire" stall yesterday morning - slightly put out by the presence of Chippenham, Trowbridge, Westbury, and Bradford-on-Avon cycling, bus and walking maps ... but nothing at all for Melksham.  My personal view is that you start at home, and provide the information for the townie which the event is running - especially when it's about the local transport and access within that town.   Melksham information is useful for many / most people at a Melksham event; information on cycling in Westbury is at best useful for only a small proportion of them.

Anyway, I queried this with the lady manning the stand and she told me that a Melksham map had come out, but only recently and the hadn't yet got stocks though.   I gave her a couple I had,  together with some TransWilts timetable / brochures (all of which we had received in late July) ... and went back to base and stocked the stand with a further 50 or so of each ... delighted to then see a few people walking around with our bright yellow brochure, so it was obviously getting out. Excellent!

Alerted to the fact that the lady said she was only there for the one day, I went along this morning to touch base with whoever was manning the booth today to find ... a totally empty booth.   On chatting with the organisers, it seems that it was booked for both days (and paid for out of LSTF^▸ (Local Sustainable Transport Fund) money?) but for some reason it's not being made use of today - whether by design or accident I know not.

I briefly toyed with the idea of rushing home and doing a popup booth (with organiser's permission - easily obtained ;-) ) but decided against - lack of people at very short notice, lack of all the material needed, it would have been a half-baked job and I don't really want TransWilts to look half baked.   Jo Public will see an empty hole and won't know who should have been there; no major damage done there.

Please excuse the frustration shown here ... with a "can you help us man the booth" we could have had a further way to reach people.  The setup cost has been paid, the literature printed ... seems to me that someone has simply filed to jump the last hurdle.

Of course, Sunday is the day of rest for many, and has been so traditionally for transport too, so I should not be surprised.  The trains have been pretty busy with general use on Sundays this summer (Weymouth specific excursions are a different subject) and as I came back through the town fro the river festival, the first bus to Bath (271) had crowd joining it and looked like nearly every seat was taken.   Across the road, six or seven people were waiting for the first bus the other way to Devizes and beyond.