Good morning, Mendips! It's a soggy week, so here's plenty to do under cover: the final days of the Wells Festival of Literature, photographer Max Milligan in Upton Noble on Friday, and a cracking read about the goats nobody owns at Cheddar Gorge. Also on the way: a Camelot castle for Glastonbury's playground and a witches' treehouse at Wookey Hole.
📅 Featured Event — Max Milligan's photographic world tour at Upton Noble
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Wookey Hole treehouse · Glastonbury castle playground · Shepton food-savers · Grease singalong
🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry
🐐 The Goats Nobody Owns — the story of Cheddar Gorge's wild residents
🗓️ What's On This Week — across the Mendips
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast
Featured Event: Max Milligan, Around The World In 40 Years
He is an exceptional photographer' -- The Guardian
Ever fancied seeing the world through the lens of someone who has photographed rock concerts, film sets like Bridget Jones and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales? On Friday 23 October, photographer Max Milligan brings his illustrated talk, Around The World In 40 Years, to Upton Noble Village Hall. He started out in the 1980s as a wildlife photographer and has since published nine photographic books.
The pictures roam from the ancient stone circles of Britain and Ireland to Icelandic volcanoes, underwater Gabon, and the landscapes and cultures of Lebanon, Peru, Scotland and Ghana, all shot in natural light with no flash, filters or Photoshop. His work hangs in collections including Deutsche Bank's, he lectures at the Royal Geographical Society, and The Times named his work among its top ten travel books of the year. His talks are known for their beauty, brisk humour "and a little nudity".
Tickets are £15 and include a complimentary drink. It's a village fundraiser, with every penny going to the Friends of St Mary Magdalene, so you get a proper night out and the church gets a boost. The ticket page doesn't list a start time, so check it before you set off.
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🎢 Wookey Hole Plans Witches' Treehouse And Dinosaur Valley Revamp
Plans have gone in to Somerset Council to revamp Dinosaur Valley at Wookey Hole, with an abandoned witches' treehouse, a wonky cliff walkway, a rickety bridge to a mammoth tower and a woodland hideout. There's also a new area for younger children. You can see the plans and comment online until the site notice expires on Friday 6 November, with a decision due by Thursday 10 December.
🏰 Glastonbury's £200,000 Playground Gets A Castle And Dragons
Camelot Castle will take centre stage at the revamped playground in Abbey Park, after Glastonbury Town Council picked Wicksteed's Arthurian design from nine entries. Expect towers, slides, a Sword in the Stone climbing rock, dragon-themed kit and a wheelchair-accessible ramp, carousel and in-ground trampoline. Installation is planned for March and April 2027, with the opening in April.
🥕 Shepton's Food-Savers Launch £2,500 Christmas Appeal
The Shepton Mallet Waste Action Group and Community Fridge is asking for £2,500 by Friday 13 November to keep rescuing surplus food and sharing out household goods through its new shop. The volunteers save more than 50 tonnes of food from waste every year, and rescued 10 tonnes in Christmas week alone last year. Their community fridge and pop-up days attract about 200 people a day.
🎬 Grease Is The Word At Oakhill Chapel
Time to release your inner Sandy or Danny. On Saturday 24 October, a Grease film singalong is raising money for Youth With A Future, a Mendip charity that supports young people aged 16 to 25 who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. There's a non-alcoholic bar, sweets, snacks, cakes and Mr Whippy ice cream, plus a £1-a-strip raffle. Seats are a £10 donation, they're limited, and they must be booked in advance on 07504 758263. Bring cash for the door and the raffle.
English Lessons from the
Uxbridge English Dictionary
Probiotic -
In favour of the six million dollar man
Frankincense -
the permanent state of mind of The late Mike Reid's EastEnders character
Sycophancy -
term applied to women who take a shine to, write to and sometimes marry mass murderers etc.
Inarticulate -
Someone who drives a lorry for a living
Mutiny -
a can of Australian cat food
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🐐 The Goats Nobody Owns
Drive through Cheddar Gorge and sooner or later you'll brake for a goat. It'll be standing in the road with the confidence of an animal that knows it was here first. In fact it wasn't, and it doesn't belong to anybody.
For thousands of years sheep and cattle kept the gorge's slopes open. By the mid-20th century that grazing had all but stopped, and scrub began to swallow the rare limestone grassland. The National Trust started clearing it in the late 1980s. In the 1990s goats were deliberately brought in to keep it clear.
The sheep are more of a mystery. Soays are a primitive breed, which the National Trust describes as "Bronze Age sheep", and nobody has a record of how they reached Cheddar. One local tale says a handful were lost as the stake in a game of poker. They weren't welcome in their new home and found themselves "relocated" to the gorge.
Either way, they now have no formal owner. A group of landowners, farmers, conservationists and the parish council looks after them, chaired by the Mendip Hills National Landscape team. Every December, during the rutting season when the animals bunch together, rangers and volunteers walk the slopes with clipboards to count them. At the last published count, in 2018, there were 114 sheep and just 27 goats. The goats had halved after the Beast from the East. Since then a thermal-imaging drone has joined the count.
The reward for all that chewing is the flowers, especially the Cheddar pink, which grows wild only here and is Somerset's county flower.
Then comes the snag. The gorge also shelters whitebeam trees found nowhere else. The Cheddar whitebeam's survival is threatened by the very goats brought in to keep young trees down. Rarer still is Fay's whitebeam: just ten trees, in Cheddar Gorge and Burrington Combe. This autumn volunteers have been climbing the cliffs to collect their seed for Westonbirt Arboretum, including 84-year-old botanist Libby Houston. "I'm lucky," she told the BBC. "My sense of balance could go but it hasn't yet. Touch wood."
There's one final twist. Soay sheep are now on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's priority list. Cheddar's freeloaders may be scarcer than you'd think.
So next time a goat holds up the traffic, give it a moment. It's at work.
Over to you: Got a good photo of the Cheddar goats or sheep, ideally not on the bonnet of your car? Hit reply and send it in.
Tuesday 20 October
Wells Festival of Literature: Elizabeth Goldring — 2pm, Cedars Hall. Holbein: Renaissance Master. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Daisy Fancourt — 4.15pm, Cedars Hall. Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Arthur Snell — 6pm, Cedars Hall. elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive It. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Sophia Smith Galer — 7.45pm, Cedars Hall. How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words. Ticketed. Booking
Mad Men and Artists — 11am, Caryford Hall, Ansford, Castle Cary. October lecture from The Arts Society Mid Somerset: Tony Rawlins on how the advertising industry exploited fine art. Free for members, visitors £8. More info
Millena & the Misfits — 7pm, Waldegrave Arms, East Harptree. Uplifting folk, infectious pop melodies and funk grooves. Free entry, donations welcome. More info
Group Soundscape with Helen Stillwell — 7.15pm, Mells Barn, Mells. About an hour, and pre-booking is essential. More info
Our Show, Her Legacy (SWTA) — Strode Theatre. A memorial evening; start time not listed. More info
Wild Tribe 'Tuesday Takeover' Market — The Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury. Weekly quirky market, dogs welcome, café on site. Free entry. More info
Wednesday 21 October
Wells Festival of Literature: Sara Wheeler — 2pm, Cedars Hall. Jan Morris: A Life. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Florence Hazrat — 4.15pm, Cedars Hall. On the Mark: A History of Punctuation from Ancient Egypt to the Emoticon. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Oz Clarke — 6pm, Cedars Hall. A Vine is a Wild Thing: The Iconic Guide to Grapes, Growers and Gloriously Good Bottles. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Henry Normal — 7.45pm, Cedars Hall. Collected Poems Volume Four. Ticketed. Booking
Building Stones of Wells Cathedral (Mendip Rocks) — 10am-12pm, Cathedral Green. £8, but sold out. More info
Behind the Scenes - Archive Tour — 11am, Shoemakers Museum. See the museum website for the price. Booking
Follow the Plough: Growing Up on the Mendips — 2.30pm, Cross Memorial Hall, Cross. Talk by Les Davies MBE. Non-members are asked for a £5 donation. More info
Fun Dance Class — 5.30pm, Chewton Mendip Village Hall, Chewton Mendip. Weekly Wednesday class led by Helena Eden, mixed styles with high and low impact options. £10 drop-in. More info
Field To Food Learning Day — Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet. A hands-on day to help young people learn where their food comes from and the work farmers do, with the Royal Bath & West Society. Time and price not listed. More info
Henton Garden Club: X Factor - Neil Ross — 7pm, Henton Village Hall, Henton. £5 for non-members, free for members. More info
Matthew C. Whitaker (HENGE) - Live at The Tree House — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. £14.50 advance plus fee. Booking
Adult Performance Company — 7.30pm, Chew Magna Baptist Hall, Chew Magna. Weekly adult performance group led by Casey Lloyd, open to complete beginners and experienced performers alike. Free, booking required. Booking
Thursday 22 October
Shepton Mallet Prison Halloween Tours — 6.30pm, Shepton Mallet Prison. 90-minute after-dark guided tours. £30. More info
Beth Calverley: Landscapes of Connection — 7.30pm, Chew Valley Library, Bishop Sutton. Free, booking required. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Amy Jeffs — 4.15pm, Cedars Hall. Arthur: A New Life. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Gavin Francis — 6pm, Cedars Hall. The Unfragile Mind: Making Sense of Mental Health. Ticketed. Booking
Wells Festival of Literature: Oliver Bullough — 7.45pm, Cedars Hall. Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won. Ticketed. Booking
Simeon Walker - Lunchtime Concert — lunchtime, Glastonbury. Leeds-based pianist and composer playing intimate contemporary-classical, jazz and ambient piano. Free entry; the venue is on the listing. More info
Walk & Wine Thursday — 6pm, Wells Market Place (meet near Penniless Porch). Weekly circular walk for women, finishing at Fosso Lounge for a drink if you fancy one. Free. More info
Chantel McGregor - Live at The Tree House — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. £20 advance plus fee. Booking
Rameagle + Vertigo at The King Arthur — The King Arthur, Glastonbury. Psychedelic rock from Rameagle, opened by local neo-jazz and soul outfit Vertigo. Free entry; start time not listed. More info
🎬 This Week at Wells Film Centre
Street Fighter [12A] — Tue, Wed, Thu
Forgotten Island [PG] — Tue, Wed, Thu
The Social Reckoning [15] — Tue, Thu
Heart of the Beast [12A] — Tue, Wed, Thu
Verity [15] — Wed
Sense And Sensibility [U] — Tue, Wed, Thu
Listings run to Thursday 22 October. Friday and Saturday films go up on the Film Centre site later in the week.
🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 19 October
Wet and cooler today at 8-10°C. Wednesday brings on-and-off rain with the wind building, Thursday looks wet all day, and Friday is forecast to be the wettest and windiest day of the week, so keep an eye on travel plans. Saturday should ease to partly cloudy at 9-15°C, with Sunday the warmest at up to 16°C.
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