CONCERNING the suggested move of the TIC from its prominent position in Ledbury and the idea of putting a coach parking area on a store car park.

I, as a coach tour guide, have been quietly discussing the situation with various tour companies and also with their drivers who are a very important part of tourism because they can quite often decide which towns to visit to please their passengers and to make tours easier for themselves.

Most coach tours drop off and pick up at or opposite the Market House and their groups usually make a beeline for tea shops, Church Lane and the TIC, followed by visits to the shops. A great many of these visitors are early retired or elderly and as most visits to Ledbury last perhaps one to two hours, they will have enough to see without bothering to try to find the TIC if it is moved. The only complaint I have received about Ledbury from a visitor has been that one hour had not been long enough and so she, like others, had collected a Ledbury leaflet from the TIC with the intention of returning.

With regard to coach parking, the Market House is an ideal drop off. It is on the flat, with all amenities close to hand. Coach drivers, once unloaded and free of their responsibility, like to get clear of the town centre as easily and quickly as possible, without getting tangled up in side streets and with shoppers. It is a time when they can take a rest and most coaches have toilets and facilities for drinks.

The idea of borrowing space from a new store or industrial park is not going to meet these criteria in the long term and it is also courting danger to expect a coach driver to park or reverse into a space while shoppers are also trying to park or are moving around on foot with shopping trolleys and children.

The store may well arrange a car park attendant to start with but once established and as it gets busier they will I am sure begin to take the coach spaces for their own use! I recently visited a small town which has six spaces allocated to coaches. My driver struggled to manoeuvre his 50 seater coach into the car park only to find that two spaces had been taken by a skip and an auto-caravan and remaining bays were already occupied.

In my opinion two possibilities emerge. First liase with Ledbury Rugby Club to allow parking from Mondays to Friday when their parking area is not much in use and arrange to use parking bays at John Masefield School on Saturdays and Sundays in term time and during holidays. This type of solution is used in other small towns and drivers pass the word around to colleagues. Second, as an alternative why not establish a coaches only lay-by along theby pass near the River Leadon?

MRS M E BRACE, Registered Tourist Guide, Harcourt Road, Mathon.