MARLINTON, W.Va. — The Mountain Music Trail, a grass-roots effort to preserve music, dance and folk customs in five counties along U. S. Route 219, was “Highly Commended” by the British Guild of Travel Writers during their 2016 annual awards dinner Sunday evening at London’s Savoy Hotel.
Nominated by London-based travel writers Paul Wade and Kathy Arnold, who traveled the trail in 2014, the Mountain Music Trail became one of three finalists in the “Wider World” category and received the High Commendation Sunday.
Cara Rose, executive director of the Pocahontas County Convention and Visitors Bureau and coordinator of the Mountain Music Trail, traveled to London to attend the dinner and meet with group tour operators in hopes of extending recognition of the MMT to the international travel market.
“The Mountain Music Trail was in good company tonight — Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt took home the win, but West Virginia’s Mountain Music Trail is now recognized as a 2016 British Guild of Travel Writers Wider World Tourism Initiative Finalist,” Rose said. “A fantastic achievement for our state.”
Winner of the Wider World category was the Sinai Trail, a 200-kilometer public trail from the Gulf of Aqaba to St. Katherine, Egypt. Also “Highly Commended” was Limalimo Lodge in the Simien Mountains National Park of Ethiopia.
Each tourism project had to be completed within the past three years, nominated by a Guild member and selected via a secret ballot of the Guild’s 270 professional journalists, writers, editors, photographers, broadcasters and bloggers. The Guild members proposing a project were asked to evaluate the initiatives on the basis of tourism potential and benefit to the local community.
The Mountain Music Trail organization “offers community-based old-time musical expressions steeped in the folk culture and traditions of the east-central Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia,” according to a press release.
The organization seeks “to promote, publicize, facilitate and educate the public about the various musical forms and folkways that reflect the values of the people living in the five-county region of the state.”
The travel writers noted in their nomination that “the Mountain Music Trail links musicians, artists, instrument makers and galleries selling locally-made crafts, plus villages, restaurants and places to stay. Here, only 3.5 hours from Washington, D.C., hear Old-Time fiddle and banjo music, handed down from early settlers.”
For more information on the Mountain Music Trail, visit mountainmusictrail.com.
