dartmoorlander@aol.com

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Those who visit this site on a regular basis may have noticed that on the newer pages there is now a request for donations towards the upkeep of this website. Believe me it was not a decision made easily as I have always been one to 'put up and shut up' and ask for as little help as possible. However, in this present economic climate this ethos is becoming hard to adhere to in many cases. OK, it could be said that this being the case simply shut down the website and find something else to do, which I have seriously considered.

But there are a couple of factors to bear in mind, firstly the monthly stats provided by my internet hosting company show that on an average month this site receives a minimum of 40,000 hits from across the world - see HERE. Secondly, judging from the comments received from the visitors book there are many regular visitors to this website who use it as a reference source for their various Dartmoor activities - see HERE. Lastly, there are a fair few comments in the visitor's book which state that this website has inspired them to actually visit Dartmoor and in some cases they have travelled from abroad to do so. All of the above would suggest that Legendary Dartmoor is serving a purpose.

Below is a table showing the projected cost of Legendary Dartmoor for 2012:

When looking at the above expenses it could be argued that the BT provider costs allows me to use the internet for other purposes but virtually all my web activities are centred around aspects of Dartmoor. The royalty free graphic subscription may also be questioned but I believe such images add to the pages and the only other source would be to copy them from other sites which I will not do. A new camera? again this was to improve the quality of photographs on this website and a good 90% of its use is Dartmoor related. The computer repair may also be questioned but without it how can Legendary Dartmoor be run? Then we come to mileage costs, why bother visiting Dartmoor? Because I want as much of the information and as many of the photographs to be up to date and the only way to do that is to get out on the moor. The above are costs for just this current year and this website has been running now for over six years and still incurred similar expenses.

Admittedly I get a great deal of pleasure from researching, designing and writing Legendary Dartmoor so that is a bonus as is visiting the Moor. But putting that aside it is still costing over a £1,000 a year to run Legendary Dartmoor and that is money that could certainly be better spent elsewhere as my wife will testify.

The whole purpose of this particular web page is not to beg and whinge but merely to indicate why I have begun to ask for help towards its running costs. As noted above, this was not an easy decision to make and not one that I am particularly comfortable with.

If you have found this website helpful please help towards its upkeep - Thank You.

09/11/2012