Coach tour parties love Chesterfield

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 20th Oct 2006

A visitor from Essex has paid a glowing tribute to Chesterfield after enjoying a coach trip to the town. Mrs V Clark, from Saffron Walden in Essex, said it was the highlight of her aged father's holiday. "We went to Queen's Park and as well as enjoying the park and gardens and river, it was a delight to go somewhere where so much thought had gone into facilities for those in wheelchairs", she wrote.

"You have no idea how much difference it made to our trip to go up the ramp to a lovely café, use the loo without hassle and find everything easy and clean".

Latest figures show that the number of coach tours visiting Chesterfield has rocketed since the opening last year of the town's new coach station.

Before the new station opened, 125 tour coaches made the town their destination in 2003/4 and 140 the following year. In 2005/6, when the coach station built by the Borough Council opened, 205 coaches came here.

And this year, figures for the first six months of the year, from April to September, show another rise - 163 compared with 125 in the same period last year, 101 in the same six months of 2004 and 89 between April and September of 2003.

Borough Council Leader, Cllr Ray Russell, said: "It is very pleasing that the numbers of visitors to Chesterfield is rising and that the new coach station is playing its part in attracting people here.

"They all spend money here and add to the prosperity of the town."