Good morning, Mendips! It's a lively week: blues legend Walter Trout plays Frome on Thursday, and the Wells Festival of Literature opens on Friday. Plus Tolkien's honeymoon trip to Cheddar's caves, and a Christmas market date for your diary.

📅 What Shall We Do This Week? — cheese talks, jazz films, blues guitar and a book festival

📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Palace Christmas market · Street's flags return · Tor business units · Wells City's cup trip · Geology up the Tor

🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry

🧙 Feature — The Mendip caves that ended up in Middle-earth

🗓️ What's On This Week — across the Mendips

🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

This is one of those weeks that builds as it goes. It starts gently with art and a walk up the Tor, picks up with a cheese talk, a jazz film and a blues legend, and ends with the opening of the Wells Festival of Literature on Friday. Half-term is still a week away, so this is a good one for grown-up evenings out.

If you haven't been yet, start the week at Wells Art Contemporary in Wells Cathedral. This year's theme is "For what is time?", and the shortlisted works sit among the cathedral's centuries-old stonework, which makes for some interesting conversations. It's free for residents of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, so it's an easy lunchtime wander for anyone curious about modern art. On Tuesday morning, keen walkers can join Layers of the Land, a guided geology walk up Glastonbury Tor (more on that in Hot News below).

Wednesday is a good night for food lovers. At Caryford Hall in Ansford, cheesemaker Tom Calver of Westcombe Dairy talks about traditional clothbound Cheddar, ricotta and charcuterie, and introduces the dairy's cheese robot, Tina the Turner. There's a tasting too, so come hungry. Jazz fans should head to Strode Theatre in Street for Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Grant Gee's new film starring Anders Danielsen Lie as the pianist. It picks up in New York in June 1961, just as Evans has found his perfect trio, and follows what happens after tragedy strikes.

Thursday brings two very different treats. In Frome, blues-rock guitarist Walter Trout plays the Cheese & Grain. He spent the 1980s with Canned Heat and then John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and after a liver transplant in 2014 this tour is billed as a celebration of survival. It's one for anyone who likes their guitar loud and heartfelt. Back in Wells, families with musical children might prefer Legends and Love Songs at Cedars Hall, where the Wells Cathedral School Symphony Orchestra plays Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite and Whitacre's Five Hebrew Love Songs. Tickets are free, and it's a lovely chance to hear some seriously talented young players.

Friday is the big one for book lovers. The festival opens at Cedars Hall with novelist Patrick Gale on his book Love Lane and broadcaster Stephen Sackur on Hard Truth, and it runs until Saturday 24 October with names including Jonathan Dimbleby, Lady Hale and Oz Clarke. It's a rare chance to hear big-name writers without trekking to Bath or Cheltenham. If music is more your thing, Zoe Lindsay and her band bring Freebird: A Tribute to Eva Cassidy to the Strode, with Fields of Gold, Songbird and Over the Rainbow on the setlist.

Looking ahead to the weekend, the Glastonbury Faerie Ball and Weekend Fayre marks 20 years of Karen Kay's faery events at Glastonbury Town Hall, with a free daytime fayre to browse. On Saturday night, Coldplay by Candlelight comes to Wells Cathedral, and on Sunday afternoon Wells City Band plays Croscombe Village Hall. We'll have the full weekend round-up on Friday.

However you spend it, get out and try something new this week. Times, venues and the full day-by-day list are all in the What's On This Week section below.

About 70 local makers and producers will fill The Bishop's Palace in Wells for its Christmas Artisan Market on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 November, from 10am to 4pm. New this year is a food and drink marquee stocked with cheeses, cakes, chocolates, preserves and local gin and rum, and Wells City Band plays from noon on the Saturday. Tickets are £9 including the Palace and its 14 acres of gardens, or £7.50 for the market only from 2pm, which the organisers say is the more relaxed time to browse.

Read full story → (The Bishop's Palace)

Union Flag banners are going back up along Street High Street for the Remembrance period, after their removal last month upset many residents. Street Parish Council agreed the change at an extraordinary meeting on 6 October, saying it had listened to residents and hoped the move would help the community come together. The flags will stay up for the Remembrance Parade and come down when the Christmas lights go up in mid-November, and the council will now draw up a clear banner and flag policy.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

Six barn-style business units are set to be built off Edgarley Road in Glastonbury, between Mollens Farm and Millfield Preparatory School, after a planning inspector overturned Somerset Council's refusal. The council had been worried about views from Glastonbury Tor, but the inspector found the scheme sustainable. Plans include a food and drink outlet and a fitness centre, with up to 30 full-time and eight part-time jobs expected and building possibly starting soon after Christmas.

Read full story → (Glastonbury Nub News)

Wells City will travel to Yeovil Town's Huish Park in the second round of the Francis Hillier Premier Cup, Somerset's county competition. Yeovil reached this stage with a 7-0 win over Radstock Town, so City will need to be at their best. The date has not been confirmed yet, so keep an eye out if you fancy a trip to the big ground.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

A guided geology walk on Tuesday 13 October explores how the rocks shaped the Isle of Avalon, including a climb up Glastonbury Tor. Layers of the Land is led by local expert Val Graham for Somerset Earth Science Centre as part of the Mendip Rocks 2026 programme. It's about two miles with around 120m of climbing and steep steps on the Tor, costs £8, and places are limited, so book ahead.

Read full story → (Somerset Earth Science Centre)

Plenty of places claim a link to The Lord of the Rings, but very few can prove it. Cheddar can, and the proof comes from Tolkien himself.

In March 1916 a young Second Lieutenant named Ronald Tolkien married Edith Bratt in Warwick. With the war on, they had only a week's honeymoon, which they spent at Clevedon. During that week they made a trip to Cheddar Gorge and went into the caves. A few months later Tolkien was on his way to the Somme.

He came back in April 1940, during another war, this time on holiday near Weston-super-Mare with Edith and their three youngest children. By then he was deep into writing The Lord of the Rings. Soon after that visit he wrote one of the book's loveliest passages.

After the battle of Helm's Deep, Gimli the dwarf tells Legolas about the caverns behind the fortress, the Glittering Caves of Aglarond. He's outraged that the people of Rohan just call them "Caves! Holes to fly in time of war, to store fodder in!" He goes on to describe what he saw by torchlight: "columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose", "fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms". It reads like a love letter to a show cave.

For years readers could only guess at the source. Then in February 1971 a reader wrote to praise the passage, and Tolkien, by then nearly 80, wrote back. He said that it "was based on the caves in Cheddar Gorge". He'd written it just after his 1940 visit, but it was "still coloured" by his memories of the honeymoon trip, from before the caves "became so commercialised".

So it's a compliment with a sting in its tail. Tolkien didn't much like what had been done to Cheddar between his two visits. In the book, Gimli promises that his dwarves would tend the caves gently, tapping away a flake of rock in a day's careful work, rather than blasting them. Some Tolkien scholars read that as a quiet dig at what he saw in Cheddar.

Cheddar can take it. Gough's Cave, found in 1892, and Cox's Cave, found in 1837, are both still open, and the gorge outside hasn't changed much since 1916. Walk in on a quiet morning and you might still see what the honeymooners saw.

Over to you: When did you first go into Cheddar's caves, and what do you remember? Hit reply and tell us.

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 12 October

A mild but damp start, with showers on Monday morning clearing to around 19°C. Tuesday brings a wet morning before it dries out and turns breezy in the afternoon. Wednesday and Thursday look dry and bright at 18–19°C, then it turns cooler on Friday at 15°C with a chilly 5°C night, and the weekend stays fresh at around 14°C.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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