Wainwright website enjoys upsurge in visitors

8:46am Wednesday 31st October 2007

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INTEREST in Alfred Wainwright continues to flourish as television documentaries prompt an upsurge in visitors to the Wainwright Society website.

Over the last few months, online book retailers have noted a growing demand for the hillwalking legend's guidebook.

This revival has also been observed by the Wainwright Society, which noted a record number of hits on its website, with more than 1,300 web pages requested each day during August.

This is almost four times higher than the average number of pages requested each day during 2006, which has been calculated as 350.

Interest in Wainwright has increased dramatically in 2007, with the Wainwright Centenary celebrations causing a substantial increase in visitors to the website at the beginning of the year.

In February, visitor numbers increased further, with a record breaking 1,758 web pages requested each day. This coincided with the BBC documentary, The Man who loved the Lakes and the first series of Wainwright's Walks.

Numbers dropped slightly during the spring, but interest was rekindled yet again when the documentary was repeated in July and a new series of Wainwright's Walks was broadcast on BBC2, causing another upsurge in August.

John Nicol, managing director of Frances Lincoln Publishers, who supply guidebooks, sketchbooks and other Wainwright publications observed a similar pattern in the company's sales figures and added: "There was a definite "spike" immediately after the documentary went out with orders flooding in, particularly for boxed sets of the pictorial guides. Interest in the Lakes with these programmes has definitely taken off!"

n For further details of the Wainwright society, visit www.wainwright.org.uk or contact John Burland, press and publicity officer by telephone on 0772-543-4036 or by email on; publicity@wainwright.org.uk