Good morning, Mendips! Today we've got a Somerset farm throwing a festival after a rotten year, a deliberate caravan fire near Glastonbury, tougher new rules for dog walkers near livestock, and a packed week of What's On picks running from Wedmore to Edington. Let's get into it.

📅 Featured Event — Mumpfest 2026 at The Mump Market Garden

📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Hornet spotting · Clarks Village ice rink returns · Tougher livestock law for dog owners

🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry

“You rang Sir?” - Swan service on the moat.

📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips

🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

Andrea and David Maine run The Mump Market Garden on Burrow Wall in Burrowbridge — a thriving farm shop and veg box business hit twice in one year. February floods shut the A361 between Taunton and Burrowbridge for a month; then, just as trade picked up, the council closed the same stretch for ten weeks of summer roadworks, parking signs either side of the shop. Passing trade that used to bring 100 to 200 sales on a good Saturday "vanished overnight," and requests for a decent sign or any compensation went nowhere.

"It has been a bit depressing, to be honest," Andrea admits. "You build a really amazing customer base and everyone loves it. You start getting busy and then you get knocked down again." So on Saturday 19th September they're throwing a festival instead: trapeze from Moulin Bouge Circus Cabaret, bands including Animal Krackers, Severn Collective, King Dinosaur, Sam Ballentine & The Whiskies and Ethan King, wood-fired pizza, Sri Lankan food and a cider bar — all pulled together with their daughters and volunteers off Facebook.

Entry is pay-what-you-think, with a suggested £20 donation, and the licence tops out at 500 — every ticket helps the family break even after a brutal summer. Wells and Cheddar are only half an hour away, a modest drive to catch a cabaret, eat well, and back a plucky Somerset farm that refuses to be flattened.

→ Full details

Correction time — and a big thank you to sharp-eyed reader Jackie Hamblen, who wrote in to let us know we'd mixed up our hornets.

Last week we ran an article that warned a Yellow-legged Asian Hornet had been spotted nearby in Somerset. However, the picture we ran alongside our warning was actually an Asian Giant Hornet, a beast causing headaches in the US but not (yet, thankfully) buzzing around Somerset.

As Jackie, a beekeeper who's had this drummed into her over years of warnings, points out, it's an easy mix-up to make — even Google Lens gets it wrong. The real culprit to watch for here in the UK is smaller, sits closer in size to our familiar wasps, and has a black (not yellow) back to its head, a single stripe across the abdomen, and distinctive yellow "socks" on its legs.

Thanks, Jackie, for keeping us honest — and keeping Mendip's beekeepers one step ahead.

The bottom line is, for the sake of our bees - and all the important work they do for us - we need to keep these invaders at bay. If you spot one, report it ASAP. There’s even a smartwatch app you can download from Apple or Google for the purpose. Here’s all the gen: https://www.bbka.org.uk/identify-report-asian-hornet

Clarks Village in Street has confirmed its covered, 585 sq m real-ice rink is back for winter, running from Tuesday 10 November to Sunday 3 January. Tickets from £14 go on sale 5 October, with disco nights, parent-and-toddler sessions and a new 'Skate and Sing' slot planned for the rink beside the Shoemakers Museum.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

Nurture Veterinary Hospital in Wells is urging dog owners to keep pets on short leads near farm animals after the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 2025 came into force. The law now covers chasing as well as biting, removes the previous £1,000 fine cap, and gives police powers to seize dogs and take DNA samples.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

The Somerset Guy Fawkes Carnival circuit returns 7–21 November, with Wells Carnival lighting up the city on Friday 20 November from 7pm and Glastonbury Carnival closing the circuit the following night at 6.45pm. Shepton Mallet's carnival falls in between on Wednesday 18 November.

Read full story → (Glastonbury Nub News)

Most birds turn up and hope. The swans at the Bishop's Palace in Wells have a far better system: they ring a bell and wait for service.

The bell is on the right-hand side of the Gatehouse, next to the window, with a rope hanging down over the moat. Pull the rope, and staff appear with food. It is thought to go back to the 1850s, when a bishop's daughter first taught a pair of swans on the moat what the rope was for — and, remarkably, the habit has been handed down through generations of swans ever since. Not trained afresh by humans each time. Taught, swan to swan.

The current pair are Grace and Gabriel, mute swans who arrived in May 2019 courtesy of Swan Rescue South Wales. Gabriel is the bell-ringer. In fact, since they arrived, Gabriel is the only one of the two who has ever rung it — Grace generally keeps a dignified distance from the rope, although in December 2024 she was spotted edging closer, which caused some quiet excitement among palace staff. She still hasn't pulled it.

What makes Gabriel genuinely impressive is that he teaches. Every year, before the cygnets leave the moat to start life on their own, he shows them how the bell works. The palace has been keeping tabs for years: in summer 2024, two or three of the six cygnets had been shown the ropes, with one reportedly pulling "with some force". By June 2025, most of that year's brood were ringing it and, in the words of one palace update, "doing it so well". This May, Gabriel was back at it again, demonstrating the art of bell-ringing to five new cygnets.

There is something wonderfully Wells about all this. A medieval palace with a moat, a fortified gatehouse built to keep people out, and the most persistent visitors to the door for the last 170 years have been birds who worked out that architecture can be operated.

It also means the tradition is genuinely fragile in a way most heritage isn't. A cathedral survives whether or not anyone remembers how it was built. This one only survives as long as each generation of swans bothers to pass it on — and as long as there's a Gabriel prepared to teach it.

So if you're crossing the drawbridge in Wells and you hear a bell, don't look for a verger. Look down.

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 16 September 2026

Typical mid-September weather is on the cards for the Mendips this week — a mix of sunny spells and the odd shower, with temperatures gently easing as autumn settles in. Good brolly-in-the-bag weather for anyone heading to the Yeo Valley Garden Festival or Sunday's Mangelwurzel Day.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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