As part of their initial training Community Reporters in Wensleydale asked each other "Why do you want to be a Community Reporter?". Here Claire Lambert tells Di Jolland what motivated her.
A Grand Day Out.
Claire Lambert is the new marketing coordinator for Gayle Mill. She took up this voluntary post in September 2011 and has produced the newly revised tourism leaflet for 2012.
Not a dales girl Claire is never the less from the North Country having been born and bred in Cumbria. She now farms with her husband William who she met on a skiing holiday in France and they live nearby in Burtersett. . Their herd of prize-winning fresians produces milk of the highest quality as they are grazed on the superb limestone pastures of Wensleydale. Claire and William are able to sell their milk to The Wensleydale Creamery in Gayle where the cheese made famous by the animated film characters Wallace and Grommet “Cracking Cheese this Wensleydale Grommet” is now world famous which brings visitors in their thousands to Gayle.
Gayle Mill is less than a ten-minute walk away from The Creamery.
Claire is determined to put this hidden gem on the tourist map and to promote the mill in every way possible. And yet the fact that people have to “walk” seems to be a deterrent in making this wonderful piece of industrial heritage the success that it should be.
In the autumn a new television series will be shown, about the industrial heritage of England in which Gayle Mill is featured. Perhaps this and the very positive input, which Claire is putting into the mill, will make all the difference!
Watch this space!