Heritage Fatigue?

The organisers of this year's Rhuthun/Ruthin 'Open Doors' heritage weekend will no doubt have hailed it a success. Certainly, most if not all of the bookable walking & building tours were full. Though I have no feedback regarding this year's two new starters, I expect the "Folk Stories" tour would have been told enthusiastically, given it was the irrepressible Ruth Moore Williams leading it. Also new for 2010, the Quilts in Rhuthun exhibition as part of St Peter's 700 seemed very busy, though this might be as much to do with the sheer number of quilters involved. Did I see a representation of St Peter's famous oak panelled including with its bosses on one of the quilts?

Tours fully booked there might've been but I fancy there were fewer overall tour "departures" this year. In spite of the pleasant early autumn sunshine, I also fancy that there were again slightly fewer people about on Saturday, when compared to recent years (though conversely I also felt that there were *more* people around on Sunday when compared to last year).

Saturday is the big day, of course, and it started very poorly. Numbers began to rise to something of a crescendo by mid-afternoon. One indication was, for example, that it was easier to find a café table this time around, in spite of a reduction in covers since last year. Perhaps people are now suffering a little from heritage fatigue or am I being unduly pessimistic? This may be because it would seem that there were fewer people at Dinbych/Denbigh's similar event a fortnight ago, too. Mind you, Dinbych's weather was somewhat mixed.

It was also something of a surprise to learn that this year's Tŷ Gwyn tours were cancelled. It was less of a surprise that the "Through the Doors" peek at the Picture House was stopped.

In spite of what I felt were slightly fewer numbers, at least those to whom I spoke said they enjoyed themselves. The heritage weekends are a great opportunity to show off Rhuthun with the hope that people might come back. There does need to be more engagement with locals, though. How? That's a difficult question. Something to do with school children perhaps for, where pupils go, their parents are sure to follow.

It was interesting that the town council elected *not* to use the heritage weekend as one of their five free parking days. I strongly suspect that offering free parking would've made no difference whatsoever to the success of the day. It did mean that there were ample spaces available on the both days.

And, somewhat controversially, it has to be said that if you can afford a car you can probably afford to park it!