Welcome to our final e-newsletter of 2009. In this issue we kick off with news of 'Illuminating Hadrian's Wall', which will see the creation of a spectacular line of light from coast to coast, along the length of Hadrian's Wall.

We celebrate a record year for tourism in Hadrian's Wall Country with the launch of our Annual Review for 2008-09, with occupancy figures exceeding those across the rest of the UK.

The management of the World Heritage Site came under the spotlight with a visit from the German Limes and we report on the results from the first season of the Hadrian's Wall Volunteer Heritage Guides Programme.

We hosted a Blue Peter film crew in November and celebrated Hadrian's Wall being hailed as the second most iconic landmark in the country by young people in Britain.

We complete our end of year line-up with an update on the Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail survey and the new Know Your Hadrian's Wall Country initiative.

We'd also like to wish you all a merry Christmas from everyone at Hadrian's Wall Heritage Ltd and a very happy New Year.

In November we unveiled plans to create a spectacular line of light from coast to coast, along the length of Hadrian's Wall, next year.

This once in a lifetime event will take place on Saturday 13th March 2010 and will follow the route of the 84 mile long Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail.

There will be around 500 individual points of light, placed at 250 metre intervals. The first one will be illuminated at Wallsend in the North East, with the line of light then making its way along the Wall to Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria over the following hour. There will also be a number of stewarded points along the Wall where people will be able to view the line of light.

Illuminating Hadrian's Wall is an ambitious project led by HWHL which forms part of the world-class programme of festivals and events developed by culture10 in the North East of England and the Lakes Alive programme in Cumbria presented by Kendal Arts International and Manchester International Arts. Illuminating Hadrian's Wall is also a flagship event of British Tourism Week 2010.

The event is being produced by John Farquhar-Smith who was the technical director for the 8-minute 'handover ceremony' for London 2012 at the closing of the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The Illuminating Hadrian's Wall project will have a significant economic benefit for the area. We anticipate that around 22,000 additional visitors will come to the region to see the event, generating approximately £1 million in extra spending.

In addition, we expect the event to get a large amount of coverage in both national and even international media and to provide a strong legacy for future marketing activity. It will therefore help to generate a large number of additional visits in the years ahead, benefiting businesses throughout Hadrian's Wall Country.

The project is also expected to create 70 short term jobs.

For further information about Illuminating Hadrian's Wall, people can visit www.illuminatinghadrianswall.com, become a fan of Illuminating Hadrian's Wall on facebook or follow @EmperorHadrian on Twitter.

HWHL is celebrating a record year for tourism in the region after publishing their Annual Review 2008-09 last month.

The HWHL Annual Review was launched at their annual general meetings at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle on Monday 30 November and the Great North Museum in Newcastle on Tuesday 1 December.

The report revealed that overnight occupancy levels for accommodation in Hadrian's Wall Country have reached record levels, and are greater than those for the rest of the north of England and the UK.

June 2009 saw the highest ever levels of occupancy in Hadrian's Wall Country, touching 80 per cent, compared to 63 per cent in Cumbria and the Lake District and 58 per cent in the rest of the North East of England. This is a significant increase from the previous summer of 2008.

The figures for the key Roman attractions in 2009 also reflect a general upward trend with visitor figures growing by more than 7 per cent year on year - the first year of clear growth for a long time.

The Hadrian's Wall Country Website www.hadrians-wall.org has also proved increasingly popular. In the year to August 2009, 190,000 people visited the site for the first time.

The management of Hadrian's Wall Country was the focus of specialist attention following a visit by a group of leading World Heritage Site archaeologists from Germany in November.

The team from the German frontier (or Limes) visited parts of the area to see if Hadrian's Wall Heritage Ltd's experience of producing the new management plan for Hadrian's Wall can help them in producing the new management plan for the German Limes.

As part of their visit, the German Limes group learnt how Hadrian's Wall Heritage Ltd is taking an active role in working with partner organisations to best deliver real economic and tourism development within the World Heritage Site.

The tour included visits to Roman Vindolanda, Housesteads Roman Fort, Lanercost Priory, Arbeia Roman Fort & Museum and the Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail.

Particular attention was given to the Vindolanda Trust, which was recently awarded a £4 million grant award from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to transform both Roman Vindolanda near Bardon Mill and the Roman Army Museum near Greenhead. HWHL supported the Trust's application in order to present the bid within a framework linking key locations within the Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site.

The German Limes visit was coordinated by HWHL's World Heritage and Access team. There was also participation from other organisations with a close interest in the Wall, including those who manage the Antonine Wall in Scotland, which forms part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site.

The German Limes visit followed the International Limes Congress, which was staged in Hadrian's Wall Country earlier this year.

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Hadrian's Wall Volunteer Heritage Guide Programme completed its first successful season at the end of October.

During August, September and the October half term holidays, the guides led 185 tours and engaged with over 3,339 visitors to Hadrian's Wall Country.

The Guides were runners up in the 'Tourism' section of the Pride in Tynedale Awards 2009, organised by the Hexham Courant.

The Hadrian's Wall Volunteer Co-ordinator Network was also set up at the beginning of 2009 to help make Hadrian's Wall Country the best example of excellence in volunteer management of any World Heritage Site.

The group aims to promote best practice in volunteer management and support between the environmental, cultural and heritage organisations in the Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site corridor. Activities include sharing ideas and developing good practise in volunteer management across the World Heritage Site corridor, working collaboratively in accessing funding to support volunteering and exploring ideas for developing new volunteering opportunities e.g. working holidays.

A major week-long intensive survey of the Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail was carried out this autumn by the National Trail's managers, accompanied by the HWHL's consultant archaeologist and the two lengthsmen.

The Trail project now boasts a unique archive of the condition of the World Heritage Site stretching back to the mid 1990s.

Both the survey and the monitoring data revealed water-logging as a continued concern along some sections and recent high rainfall has saturated the soil around the Wall even more.

Cumbria has been particularly badly affected by the recent heavy rainfall. However, at the time of the survey, the condition of the grass along the Trail was found to be in a generally reasonable condition.

Despite the unseasonably wet summer, some sites are not as poor as might have been expected. This is largely thanks to the daily proactive surface management undertaken by the Trail's two lengthsmen and the popular Summer Passport scheme that encourages people to walk the Trail during the drier months of the year.

Walkers have also played their part by following the Trail's 'conservation tip' of walking side-by-side, instead of in single file. This helps to spread the footfall over a wider area and, ultimately, protect the archaeology that lies buried underfoot.

Year-on-year, the Trail's management and the techniques used have improved to the point where most of the remaining problem areas can now be attributed to other causes. The Trail project will be working closely with Natural England and English Heritage with a view to finding solutions and delivery mechanisms for them.

A new Summer Passport stamping point may be introduced to assist with the conservation of the Trail and monument and the many maintenance tasks identified in the autumn survey are continuing in preparation for the Trail's 2010 season.

A film crew from the popular children's BBC TV show, Blue Peter, were in Hadrian's Wall Country in November to help launch their 'Send a Smile' Appeal.

The World Heritage Site was chosen as one of only four UK locations to help launch the appeal, which is a partnership between Blue Peter and Operation Smile, a charity that provides free cleft lip and cleft palate surgery operations in developing countries.

The crew accompanied pupils from both Greenhead First School and Herdley Bank First schools to Walltown Crags to film the children lending their support to the Appeal to viewers to make medical gowns out of old t-shirts.

Medical gowns are critical as each child having cleft surgery has to wear one, but they cost Operation Smile £3 each to buy. Every gown Blue Peter viewers make and donate means that Operation Smile don't have to buy one, which means that can spend more money on operations.

The visit to Hadrian's Wall appeared on BBC1 on Tuesday 17 November.

In October, Hadrian's Wall was hailed as one of the top iconic landmarks in the country by young people in Britain.

Travelodge polled 2,500 youngsters to ask which British attractions they rate to be the best British iconic landmarks.

Stonehenge was voted the top British iconic landmark by the young respondents followed by Hadrian's Wall.

Third place was won by the largest Ferris wheel in Europe - The London Eye.

Know Your Hadrian's Wall Country is a new three-year training initiative for people who work with visitors within Hadrian's Wall Country.

The programme will offer training on a wide variety of topics, all of which celebrate what Hadrian's Wall Country has to offer visitors and what makes this region so special.

People who work with visitors to Hadrian's Wall Country will be able to broaden their knowledge of the area in a series of workshops taking place in 2010, including Exploring the Wall - Roman's, Britons and Others and Modern Histories of Hadrian's Wall Country, as well as a Natural History Day and a Dig Day.