It was The Marple Website's eleventh birthday in October, so we're now into our twelfth year and heading for our teens. Unbelievable! What's more, it's time once again to sum up the web site's year:

Although the Iron Bridge Restoration itself was finished in 2008 it's still been quite a busy year for our biggest ever project and even now everything associated with it is not completely finished. Notable achievements in 2009 have included the fitting of the bronze plaque in January, the launch of a brand new version of the Brabyns Park Trail in March, the installation of our display panel with Fanny Hudson explaining the history of the park in August and, in the same month, the completion of the documentary video charting the bridge's restoration.

You can read more about these achievements in the Project Diary. There are also specific pages for the Brabyns Park Trail, which includes instructions on how to download and print your own copy, and the documentary can be viewed in two parts via youtube using this link.

In addition to all that, in April 2009 we were pleased to be selected as overall winners of the Mersey Basin Trust's "Unilever Dragonfly Awards 2008" for our efforts to restore the bridge. This came with a trophy, being presented to us by MBT's Mary Lee above, and an award of £2,500 for us to use for future projects, which we haven't spent yet. We do have a good idea what we want to use it for but unfortunately it is going to cost a lot more money than we have, so we're going to have to give that some more thought before confirming our intentions. Mysterious eh!

We've been producing our Marple and Mellor calendar for eight years now but for the first time we decided to include photographs by other local photographers as well as our own in the 2010 issue. This was partly to give ourselves a break but also to increase the diversity of photographs featured. We think we achieved this with several great contributions from Nick Sheldon and Svetlana Roberts. We would like to thank them both for helping us out and hope that they will be doing so again next year.

Since 2006 we have donated the profits of the calendar sales to a variety of local causes, reaching a grand total of £4,200 by the end of last year. From sales of our 2009 calendar we were able to give £1,000 to "Find a Cure for Martha", which was Marple Business Forum's nominated charity. This year Marple Business Forum have nominated New Horizons and we have decided to follow their lead again by supporting New Horizons too. Quite frankly we can't think of a better local charity and we hope that it will be staying at Marple Wharf. Unfortunately sales have not been as good as previous years, partly due to us not attending as many events and maybe because we had some competition with a rival calendar being published by others. Nevertheless, we ARE in profit and look forward to announcing how much we can give to New Horizons very soon. So if you haven't got yours yet, or if you brought the wrong one, there's still time to dash out and get one!

To see the calendar in all it's glory, and to order one on-line, visit our Marple Promotions web site, which was given a major revamp earlier this year. Alternatively you will be able to get one at the Ring o' Bells up until 4th January 2010.

The influence of the late Gordon Mills on this web site is easy to see and he was a Heritage Hero of ours. Gordon allowed us to feature his walks on this site as the very first major feature in 1998 and they are still very relevant today, despite some changes to the routes that have made them a little difficult to follow at times. We were delighted to work in partnership with Marple Local History Society this year to rectify that by creating a free addendum to Gordon's walks that bring them up-to-date with the details of any changes.

The text and most of the photographs in the addendum are by David Burridge, an active member of the society. The leaflet was designed and laid out by us and the printing costs were funded by our Marple Promotions activities in memory of Gordon. Our thanks go to David and to Hilary Atkinson, chair of the History Society, who coordinated and managed the project to get Gordon's guides back into circulation. You can read more about Gordon's walks and download the addendum and guides on the Walking Guides pages.

We were pleased to see the conclusion in September of the Lock 17 Project, which had taken far longer than anticipated, with the dedication of the display to Gordon and the unveiling by his wife Barbara of bronze plaque mounted on a substantial piece of stone. We are proud to have contributed £500 towards the cost of the bronze plaque, which we also designed and procured, and in partnership with Marple Locks Heritage Society, Friends of Marple Memorial Park and Stockport Council created a fitting tribute to Gordon.

Our associations with the Friends of Marple Memorial Park and Marple Locks Heritage Society continued to thrive in 2009. The Locks Society achieved another great success with their biannual Locks Festival in July, whilst the Friends of the Park installed a new infants play area sign and erected a new fence around the basketball court, as well as holding a Task Day every month. Both groups were again given fantastic support by Marple's shops and local business community, proving once again what a great community spirit abounds in Marple. In addition, with support from Marple Civic Society, Marple Business Forum and members of the local community the Friends of the Park were able to complete their French Boules Project too.

Returning to on-line matters we've been pleased to welcome Friends of Our Valley, Marple Movers and Shikata Shotokan Karate to the Community Pages and to support Marple Writers, initially in their 2008/9 Marple Writing Competition, which concluded during the Locks Festival, and more recently with the launch of their 2009/10 Marple Poetry Competition. We'd like to thank all the local groups for their support, especially those who keep their pages up to date on a regular basis.

Thanks too to everyone who has contributed to the Virtual Tour this year. This great resource has grown considerably over the last 12 months and now features almost 3,500 images that have been viewed an amazing 643,450 times up to Christmas Eve. That's more than 206,000 images viewed in the year. We passed through the milestone of half a million back in May 2009 and while it may be too much to ask for 2010, we look to be heading steadily towards our first million!

New photos have come from many sources over the last 12 months but special thanks are due to Marple Local History Society, Marple Civic Society, Ray Noble and Arthur Procter for his modern-day contributions that will eventually become the old photos of tomorrow. We'd also like to thank Coral Dranfield and Steve Cliffe for the acknowledgement to the "Tour" in their new book "Marple and District Through Time". We were pleased to be able to help Coral and Steve by providing many of the old photographs that were used in this fine addition to Marple's library of heritage books.

One of the great things about the Virtual Tour is the feedback we receive and how keen visitors are to help us improve the captions. It is particularly good to be able to identify the people in photographs as it seems to make them much more than just an old image. Well here's a challenge for all you Marplians of a certain age! This most recent addition to the Virtual Tour, 'The Willows' Soccer Team of 1959/60,  was provided to us yesterday and we know every name except for the chap second from left in the front row. Can you identify him for us? Click the image to visit the Tour and see the other names.