llanblogger celebrates its first successful year

* The couple who had their wedding reception aboard a steam train - still our most popular story.

* Above: snowbound A5 in March.

* Below (1): A dramatic rescue from the River Dee.

* Below (2) Part of the parade at last year's Christmas Festival. 

 

Today llanblogger celebrates its first birthday.

Since we launched on July 9 last year we’ve brought you over 1,000 stories which, we are delighted to say, have attracted close on 90,000 page views from our readers.

It’s been a momentous 12 months when our town has been at the centre of a number of big, long-running stories.

These have included the controversies over the axing of our Cottage Hospital and plans to replace it with a £5.5 million new health centre, and the construction of a Sainsbury’s supermarket on the site of the current Dobson & Crowther factory on the A5.

There has also been on the on-going argument over the future of the former River Lodge in Mill Street and the recriminations over how its fate has been handled by the Welsh Government.

Our blog started in a small way by reporting on how a fallen tree had blocked the canal one Monday last July. It attracted just a handful of page views.

But as word of the new blog spread, thanks to our presence on Facebook and Twitter, later stories we covered sent the viewing figures soaring.

For instance, when freak heavy snowfalls hit the town in March this year, we were bringing you almost hourly updates on how the white deluge was affecting Llan and its surrounding areas.

That led to the number of our page views hitting the 600-700 a day mark.

Our most popular story to date, however, remains the lovely tale of how a couple held their wedding reception aboard a steam train from Llangollen Station. Because the bride and groom had strong American connections, llanblogger went international by attracting many page views from across the other side of the Atlantic.

In fact, stories about our heritage railway are always popular with our readers and regularly lead to a high number of page views.   

The railway is just one of the local attractions we feature. As often as possible we highlight events at the Pavilion, Plas Newydd and in the Town Hall.

And entertainment isn’t the only reason llanblogger makes regular mention of the Town Hall because we go there every month to bring you comprehensive reports on the meetings of our Town Council. We are also represented on the group which is currently bidding for Cittaslow status for the town.

Politics features strongly in our range of coverage. Apart from the deliberations of the town and county councils, we also bring you stories about our local Assembly Members and Members of Parliament.

A range of local clubs and organisations and their activities also find regular space on our blog – from the group which nurtures our excellent community garden to the brilliant Silver Band, the moving funeral of whose stalwart member Albert Hammonds we reported on last summer.

Another area we take very seriously is providing our readers with information about things such as local roadworks and warnings on crime and safety matters from the police, fire and health services.

Quite a few local organisations now get in touch with us on a regular basis so that we can feature their events and activities on the blog but we’d love to hear from more of you.

All you have to do to get your information on the blog – completely free of charge – is email us at the usual address, llanblogger@gmail.com

As we celebrate our first successful year, we hope that you’ve enjoyed reading llanblogger as much we’ve enjoyed creating it, and please keep logging on!