TELEVISION shows and literature are among the themes of five new tourist trails being created to attract more visitors to southern Oxfordshire.

Tourism is worth £428m a year to South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils, and council leaders want to do more to boost the tourist trade.

The Ox Trails project will feature themed guides to take visitors on a journey based on one of five different experiences.

Once launched, the trails will also be available via a number of formats, including a website, brochure, and mobile phone app.

The literature trail will highlight the works of Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows, poet Sir John Betjeman, novelist Thomas Hardy, and George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm.

There is also a food trail, a history trail, a great outdoors trail and a trail taking visitors around locations used in TV detective series Midsomer Murders, and the movies Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Anna Karenina, which featured scenes shot at Didcot Railway Centre.

The project is being led by South Oxfordshire District Council and Vale of White Horse District Council, with additional funding from the Southern Oxfordshire Leader Project, and town councils across the area.

Tourism businesses are being invited to a showcase event on Thursday, November 15, at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley, from 3.45pm to 6pm.