The Midlands Meander embraces the old and new

Marian Evans, Midlands Meander Manager, explained how the fresh-faced guide and the modern app will facilitate new tourism to the area.

Evans said: "It will transform the humble cell phone into a guide on the go - the information they want will be a button away. Traditionally visitors have paged through the beautiful picture heavy Midlands Meander Guide.

"The guide has become a sought after magazine that offers visitors to the area a smorgasbord of options on where to stay, eat, shop and what to do while visiting. Our theme changes every year and we add stories and snippets of information on the people and history of the area which keeps enticing visitors back.

This year the theme of the Midlands Meander guide is a look at the original founder members who started the Midlands Meander route exactly 30 years ago."

The Midlands Meander founder members were a group of artists and crafters who were battling to access the commercial markets in the big cities due to the rising costs, they also had to cope with the politically tumultuous times of the mid-eighties when many gallery owners were leaving.

They decided that the best idea was to create a tourism route throughout the Midlands where visitors to the area could come and see them creating work in their studios and they could sell where they were based.

This humble but novel idea was the basis for the Midlands Meander route which has become an established and thriving tourist destination.

Those humble hippie style artists and crafters of yesteryear have since grown into thriving and accomplished galleries and businesses. But they remain true to their country roots and this is what draws many city tourists into the green misty hills of the Kwa Zulu-Natal looking for the simplicity of a country break.

The Midlands Meander App is available from theGoogle Playstore and combines simplicity and cutting edge technology, offering visitors the option to use their cellphones to navigate their tourist experience.

For the techno-savvygeneration the app will "place information into the hand of guests for a quicker and easier delivery of services."
with one-touch access to location and info concerning our members. "

App users can look forward to: