THE aim of the Rhayader Google Town initiative is to encourage and attract more visitors to Rhayader by showing “street view” imagery of all the different businesses, attractions and activities Rhayader has to offer on Google Maps.

It will allow ‘visitors’ to ‘walk’ through the front door of the various businesses, organisations and facilities in the town and have a look around!

The vision for this community-based project is to “virtually” put Rhayader on the map (i.e. Google Maps) as a “Google Town”.

When the project is up and running it will provide a virtual tour of Rhayader and everything it has to offer 24 hours a day, seven days a week from anywhere in the world via the internet.

Recently a grant cheque was presented by Rhayader Town Council to Rhayader 2000 who are backing the Google Town initiative.

The grant from the Town Council will allow the Rhayader Google Town committee to purchase the equipment they require to carry out the project in addition to the 360-degree camera which they will receive on loan from Google for free for six weeks during the months of May and June.

The photograph shows the chairman of the town council, Christian Walton, presenting the cheque to Bill Stow of Rhayader 2000.

Two members of the Rhayader Google Town committee were present at the presentation, Rhayader county councillor, Kelvyn Curry, chairman of the committee, on the left in the front row, and Nigel Collins, on the right in the front row.

In the back row from left to right are: Cllr Rhys Thomas, town clerk Carl Baker, Cllr Clare Evans, Cllr John Jones, Cllr Jane Narborough, Cllr Veronica Jones Davies, Cllr Dai Davies, Cllr Gill Williams and Cllr David Evans.