THE silver jubilee celebrating Bromsgrove's highly successful twinning link with Gronau has been marked with the erection of a street sign pointing to the German town 385 miles away.

A short handing over ceremony was carried out yesterday (Tuesday) in lower High Street by Ros Cooke, the chairman of Bromsgrove and District Twinning Association.

Receiving the sign on behalf of the district council was Councillor Craig Lanham (Con-Stoke Heath). He was deputising for council chairman Jill Dyer, who was a guest at a Buckingham Palace garden party.

A twin sign pointing towards Bromsgrove and expressing the distance in kilometres was presented to the citizens in Gronau by a party from Bromsgrove who returned recently from a four and a half day trip.

The Gronau sign was erected in the Bromsgrove garden, which was built in 2003 as part of a garden festival.

Thanking the twinning association for the kind gift of the sign, Cllr Lanham commented on how successful the link had been and wished it well for the next 25 years.

Speaking about the latest friendship trip, Ros said 52 visitors had made the journey, which, apart from the formal signing of a charter reaffirming the town's commitment to twinning, had been an informal affair.

She said the trip served to highlight the 'chemistry' between the people of the twin towns who had overcome borders and barriers to make the link strong.

In addition to the sign Cllr Dyer sent their hosts six pictures of Bromsgrove. In return they were presented with a bound archive of 25 years' of twinning and a jubilee gift wrapped handtowel each bearing the words '25 years of twinning' in English and German.