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The purpose of this paper is to identify the tourism potential of natural and cultural heritage in historical irrigation canals by promoting social learning and providing digital tools to local and visitors.

This research is based on the EUWATHER project (JPI – Cultural Heritage, HERITAGE PLUS Joint Call 2015), through which new opportunities for eco-tourism and outdoor recreation as a driver for sustainable development of historical irrigation canals are provided. A case study from North-Eastern Spain, the Lower Ter area (in the Costa Brava), is analyzed. Heritage inventories and digital itineraries including the tangible and intangible cultural history of waterscape heritage have been co-designed with local communities and key stakeholders. Online data sets and Spatial Data Infrastructure (webpage and mobile app) are provided.

The project provides a manual for developing digital waterways heritage tours. For the case study, up to 118 heritage objects have been selected from 8 natural and cultural heritage categories according to their tourism potential. Three itineraries have been proposed to promote the tourism potential existing in the hinterland of the Costa Brava region.

The methods section and the main results obtained for the case study will be useful for professionals working in heritage institutions, rural development and sustainable tourism agencies.

The project provides two geo-based technologies: a digital platform (www.waterwaysexplorer.com) and a mobile app (Izi.travel) in which external users are able to collect relevant data and construct tourism itineraries from minor waterways with consolidated natural and cultural heritage. A Tool Box is provided for practitioners in order to help local communities and tourist organizations to create their own itineraries along minor waterways.

The findings of the Steering Group on Food Freshness in relation to the compulsory date marking of food contained in their Report, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, has brought within measurable distance the Regulations which were, in any case, promised for1975. The Group consider that the extension of voluntary open date marking systems will not be sufficiently rapid (or sufficiently comprehensive) to avoid the need or justify the delay in introducing legislation.

The Marketing of Spain as a Holiday Destination by British Tour Operators. As the competition between overseas tour and package holiday operators grows more intense, the nature of their marketing strategies and presentation assumes greater interest. The purpose of this paper is to examine some aspects of the structure and marketing of holidays to Spain by British tour operators. Each September or October brochures are published by tour operators, containing information on holiday destinations for the summer season of the following year, which usually extends from April to September. A total of 15 such brochures including Spain in their programme for the summer of 1986 were examined. These provided the data on the structure and marketing of package holidays to Spain examined in this paper.

The value which can be placed upon the rights of property in a name of a commodity, a food or drink, perhaps famous all over the world, which has come down to us through the centuries, is incalculable. Most of such foods and drinks have a regional association, and are prepared according to methods, often secret, handed down from one generation to another and from locally grown and produced materials. Nowhere are such traditions so well established as in cheese‐making and the wine industry. The names do not signify merely a method of manufacture, since this can be simulated almost anywhere, nor even the raw materials, but differences in climate, the soil and its treatment, its produce, harvesting, even in the contaminants of environment. Rochfort cheese, for example, is made from ewe's milk, but most important, with mould growths found only in the caves of that part of France where it is stored.

“Companies, particularly those which sell goods or services direct to the public, regard their trade marks (whether brand names or pictorial symbols) as being among their most valuable assets. It is important therefore for a trading nation such as the United Kingdom to have a legal framework for the protection of trade marks which fully serves the needs of industry and commerce. The law governing registered trade marks is however fifty years old and has to some extent lost touch with the marketplace. Moreover it causes some of the procedures associated with registration to be more complicated than they need be.” This introductory paragraph to the Government's recent White Paper on “Reform of Trade Marks Law” indicates that reform is in the air. The primary pressure for reform has emanated from Brussels with the need to harmonise national trade mark laws before the advent of the Single European market on 1st January 1993. To this end the Council of Ministers adopted a harmonisation directive in December 1988 which must be translated into the national laws of member states by 28th December 1991.

The pattern of prosecutions forfood offences has changed very little in the past decade. Compositional offences have rarely exceeded 5 per cent and, since the 1967 batch of regulations for meat products, are mostly in respect of deficient meat content. Food hygiene offences have also remained steady, with no improvement to show for all the effort to change the monotony of repulsive detail. The two major causes of all legal proceedings, constituting about 90 per cent of all cases—the presence of foreign matter and sale of mouldy food—continue unchanged; and at about the same levels, viz. an average of 55 per cent of the total for foreign matter and 35 per cent for mouldy food. What is highly significant about this changed concept of food and drugs administration is that almost all prosecutions now arise from consumer complaint. The number for adulteration as revealed by official sampling and analysis and from direct inspectorial action is small in relation to the whole. A few mouldy food offences are included in prosecutions for infringements of the food hygiene regulations, but for most of the years for which statistics have been gathered by the BFJ and published annually, all prosecutions for the presence of foreign matter have come from consumer complaint. The extent to which food law administration is dependent upon this source is shown by the fact that 97 per cent of all prosecutions in 1971 for foreign bodies and mouldy food—579 and 340 respectively—resulted from complaints; and in 1972, 98 per cent of prosecutions resulted from the same source in respect of 597 for foreign matter and 341 for mouldy food. Dirty milk bottle cases in both years all arose from consumer complaint; 41 and 37 respectively.

The case, briefly reported in the last issue of BFJ, an appeal to a Milk and Dairies Tribunal arising out of a local authority's refusal to grant a licence to a milk distributor because he failed to comply with a requirement that he should provide protective curtains to his milk floats, was a rare and in many ways, an interesting event. The Tribunal in this case was set up under reg. 16(2) (f), Milk (Special Designation) Regulations, 1963, constituted in accordance with Part I, clause 2 (2), Schedule 4 of the Regulations. Part II outlines procedure for such tribunals. The Tribunal is similar to that authorized by S.30, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, which deals with the registration of dairymen, dairy farms and farmers, and the Milk and Dairies (General) Regulations, 1959. Part II, Schedule 2 of the Act provided for reference to a tribunal of appeals against refusal or cancellation of registration by the Ministry, but of producers only. A local authority's power to refuse to register or cancellation contained in Part I, Schedule 2 provided for no such reference and related to instances where “public health is or is likely to be endangered by any act or default” of such a person, who was given the right of appeal against refusal to register, etc., to a magistrates' court. No such limitation exists in respect of the revoking, suspending, refusal to renew a licence under the Milk (Special Designation) Regulations, 1963; an appeal against same lies to the Minister, who must refer the matter to a tribunal, if the person so requests. This occurred in the case under discussion.

In this century of enormous growth in medical knowledge and skill, and the wide public interest in medical conditions, we have seen a spate of special clubs and societies whose main object is to help sufferers from some of the intractible diseases and addictions which still beset man—the Hemophilics, Alcoholics, Diabetics, Poliomyelitis victims, Multiple or Disseminated Sclerosis sufferers. The interest taken in these activities may sometimes be morbid, but in the main these societies have helped those afflicted and occasionally have contributed something to medical knowledge. For instance, from the association of hemophilics for their mutual help, it was learned that this condition has a seasonal incidence. In more recent years, other groups have been formed whose aim is prevention rather than help to those affected. The anti‐smoking clinics springing up in many areas are an example. They seek to check the rising incidence of lung cancer by helping people to give up smoking cigarettes. The latest in this field would seem to be the anti‐coronary clubs, established in the U.S.A., where the rising mortality among relatively young males is causing as much concern as in this country.

The limitations of the “passing over” defence contained in Section 113, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, especially in its use by an employer to avoid liability for the act or default of his employee, have been described in recent issues of the B.F.J., which have also contained a brief historical review of the development of the defence. With the enormous extension in recent years of the sale of factory‐wrapped and packed foods and retailers selling them to the public without prior inspection, unopened in the same state as received from the manufacturers, there have been increasing attempts to use the defence by retailers charged with selling food or drugs not of the nature, etc., under Section 2 of the Act, and especially where this Section has been invoked for the presence of foreign matter in the food. Judgment delivered by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of Chingford Borough Council v. Gwalter and A. & B. C. Chewing Gum Ltd., in the Divisional Court, where the first respondent was the retailer and the second, the manufacturers, the relevant parts of the judgment being reported on page 123 of this issue, emphasises the limitations of the passing‐over defence when used in this way.

The last ten to fifteen years have seen a marked explosion in the literature on tourism. General and specific abstracting journals and bibliographies featuring tourism exist (e.g. GeoAbstracts and Leisure, Recreation and Tourism Abstracts) and literature reviews of different aspects of tourism are frequently undertaken (e.g. Pearce 1981; Graburn 1983; Cohen 1984) but there has been little attempt to analyse the nature of the literature itself. What is actually being used and where it is coming from are questions which have rarely been addressed as the abstracts give no indication of use and most reviews are content oriented. Answers to these questions can provide insights into the nature, structure and boundaries of tourism research.