Can the last twelve months really have passed by as quickly as it seems - our first calendar has nearly expired, the new one nearly sold out - and unbelievably it's time to wish all our visitors, old and new, another Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

This is the site's fifth Christmas on-line and it's always interesting to look back on each year and highlight the things we've managed to achieve. The number of hits has continued to grow, with approximately 32,000 visits this year, and we're incredibly close to that 100,000 barrier we'd hoped to break by the end of 2003. With less than 600 to go at the time of writing, it's certainly on the cards to get there before the New Year begins - then we'll have to do something about changing the counter because it's going to run out of digits!

The Community pages have continued to grow and this year we've been joined by Romiley & Marple Lions, Marple Girl Guides, The Performance Centre: Marple, Marple Wine Club, Marple Chess Club and Marple Dog Training Club, who have re-joined! In addition we've provided a full-blown web site for The Marple Centre Regeneration Partnership and actually become members of that group too. Many other local organisations have also joined the Internet community without our help, as witnessed by the ever-growing list of latest links on the home page.

Our most significant success of 2003 has to be The Iron Bridge Project, which achieved a major milestone in August when the Group formed with Marple Local History Society and Stockport Council was awarded a Project Planning grant of over £30,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is enabling us to establish the extent of the work required to restore the Iron Bridge and to learn exactly how much more money we'll need to raise in order to complete the project. At the moment the investigation work is ongoing and we should have more to tell our visitors early in the New Year. Once we know the amount of money needed we expect to be ramping up the efforts to raise it.

We were able to orchestrate a campaign to have Marple's exchange enabled for Broadband Internet access by persuading nearly 350 people to register their interest in the service. The trigger level was reached in April and the exchange was upgraded in July this year.

We were pleased to continue building on MAVIS's successes of the past by rebuilding the old dry-stone wall at the entrance to the field at the rear of All Saints' church, on Brickbridge Road, and also by relocating the Jolly Sailor Mounting Block to the corner of Church Lane. We set up a Local Heritage Projects page to show what can be done by a handful of people with enough determination and we extend our thanks to all of Marple's Active Volunteers who've helped us with these projects.

Our proposal to create a memorial to Samuel Oldknow by relocating his plaque from All Saints' bell tower to a suitable public location was well received and is supported by Marple's Area Committee and Marple Community Council. Unfortunately this is on hold at the moment due to technical problems – as the plaque is not weatherproof. We'll continue seeking ways to overcome this in the hope that the idea can be bought to fruition.

More recently we've set two new campaigns in motion that we hope will also bring positive results. We responded to an appeal in the forum for contributions to help send a young Marple boxer to Canada next year by donating £50 and tried to encourage others to do the same. We also started an appeal to raise money to buy Marple Soldier Chris Finney an engraved watch to commemorate his award of the George Cross - recreating the civic pride shown by the community in 1916 when Private Joe Goodwin won a DCM for his actions on the Western Front. This is going well and, again, there should be more news early in the New Year.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.