Peterborough Environment City Trust are working on an idea to produce an iPhone app that will provide some extra information and guidance for people undertaking set walks around Peterborough. Chief Executive Hugh Cripps explains. Broadcast at 07:50 on Tuesday 22nd June 2010 in the Peterborough Breakfast Show hosted by Paul Stainton on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
PAUL: Now how would you like to be the official Voice of one of Peterborough’s first ever apps? What is an app, you say. Well it’s just something you have on a phone that does things, doesn’t it. We couldn’t think of a better decription. Peterborough Environment City Trust plans to put a collection of walks on the app, but they need someone to add their voice to the guide. (COUGHS THEATRICALLY) (ANNOUNCERS VOICE) Hugh Cripps is the Chief Executive at Peterborough Environment City Trust. Good morning Hugh.
HUGH: Good morning Paul. Good morning everybody else. I think you failed your audition there Paul.
PAUL: What?
HUGH: You failed your audition for the Voice of Peterborough.
PAUL: I thought I did that beautifully. (AGAIN FORTE) Good morning Hugh.
HUGH: That’s brilliant. Ok you’ve got the job.
PAUL: Well wait and see first, because I’ve actually done one already for you.
HUGH: Thank you very much.
PAUL: Have a little listen to this. (TAPE) (OB) (MUSIC: Walking on the Moon)
PAUL: Here we are then, out of the door into the lovely sunshine of Cross Street. We just take a walk past Carter Jonas on my left and up towards the building site that used to be the Corn Exchange. We’re in a bit of shade at the moment, but as we get to the end of Cross Street near the Yorkshire Bank we’ll be in beautiful sunshine. (TO PASSERS BY) Good morning. Good morning. What a lovely day. Meet the people. Meet your listeners. Up to the diggers. So as you reach the corner of Cowgate and Cross Street you hit the sunshine and the dust of the diggers on the Corn Exchange .. (COUGHS) .. site. Beautiful, beautiful. A lovely lovely walk in the sunshine. To my left, City and County Estate Agents, and the Eye Centre, and Prezzo. To my right the Leeds Building Society, and a van parked on the path which is in my way slightly, but happy day. (VAN DOOR SLAMS) Good morning. Still friendly down Cowgate. Morning.
PASSER-BY: Hi there.
PAUL: Still friendly. Half-way down Cowgate now, still in bright sunshine, going past the Continental Sandwich Bar on the left, man with walking-stick smoking three fags on my right. Yes it’s a typical Peterborough scene, as we go over King Street on my right hand side, the Sports Lounge and all their flags for the big England games. And we hit the section of Cowgate we like to call empty. Yes, shop after shop after shop, empty. Until that is you reach your watering-hole, the place to replenish, and recharge your batteries, a place called The Drapers Arms. (LIVE)
PAUL: There you go Hugh Cripps. You see you can press on your phone and you can have that walk around Peterborough. It’s not far, Cross Street, down Cowgate and a little stop at the end.
HUGH: Well it’s not quite what we’re looking to achieve with our iPhone app. (LAUGHS)
PAUL: (LAUGHS) I didn’t think you were.
HUGH: No it’s not quite.
PAUL: What are you trying to achieve then?
HUGH: Well we’re developing four walks initially. Two of them are going to be health walks, so they’re actually going to encourage people to walk at a certain speed, then stop, do some stretches, then jog for a little bit. And the other walks are going to be .. not descriptive .. the people are not going to actually listen to the walk as they walk around. They’ll have a map, and they’ll follow the walk, and at certain points there’ll be GPS enabled hotspots. So at a certain point your iPhone will make a little noise and then you’ll be able to listen to something. Now it could be a decription of what you’re actually seeing, it could be a bit of social history, or it could be something describing the wildlife in the area.
PAUL: Right. Ok. So which of the four walks you’re going to do first?
HUGH: We’re looking at doing a health walk around the lake in Hampton, and we’re looking at probably developing a walk around Orton Mere and Lynch Wood. The idea of this app is technology is wonderful as you know. What we can actually do is you think of a walk, and we can actually produce it. You could actually do a pub crawl for instance, put that on there.
PAUL: You can’t do Crown to Town any more unfortunately. It’s all gone. There’s no pubs left.
HUGH: No. (LAUGHS) So we’re looking for other people to come up with ideas, so it could be blue plaque walks of historic buildings in Peterborough. So it could be anything. So we want people to come up with good ideas, and of course we want even more importantly people to sponsor a walk.
PAUL: And you need a voice as well, to voice it all up for you as well.
HUGH: Yes. Some of the bits will actually need voice-overs. Others will actually .. if we had say social history we might want to actually record the individual themselves describing working in the brick pits of Peterborough back in the nineteen thirties, or some other description like that.
PAUL: It will be lovely yes. So if people do want to get involved, either to sponsor or be the Voice, or whatever, want more information, how do they do that?
HUGH: Well contact Peterborough Environment City Trust, and we’ll be happy to hear from you.
PAUL: Yes. You could be the Voice of Peterborough’s app on the iPhone for walks around the city. Sounds good to me.
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