A CHAGFORD woman has been awarded the OBE for services to tourism in the South West in the Queen?s Birthday Honours.

Sonia Meaden, who lives at Chagford, has been a director of South West Tourism for more than ten years.

Mrs Meaden said: ?I am surprised but absolutely delighted. You just carry on doing whatever you do in life and you don?t think people take much notice but seemingly, they do.?

Mrs Meaden said she had been worked in the tourism industry all her life, running her own company WestStar Holiday Parks, which owns a number of family holiday parks in locations around the region.

Mrs Meaden said in the decade she had spent as a director of South West Tourism, she had seen a sea change in the fortunes and perception of tourism in the region.

?We have become fashionable. A lot of that is down to the work of the regional tourist board but we have the Eden Project and Rick Stein. All these things happening help to put us back on the map.

?It?s a place that people want to come to,? she said.

She said South West Tourism had become streamlined in the last ten years and now had a small efficient board, which the Government would probably hold up as an example of good practice.

Mrs Meaden has lived in Chagford for the last nine years, having previously lived on Exmoor.

She said she was looking forward to a trip to the Palace to collect her honour later this year.