Issue #12 | Saturday 4 July 2026

Good morning, Mendips! The Bath & West Showground is full of roaring engines and gleaming metal this weekend as AutoFest UK celebrates ten years — and that's just the start. East 17 headline a 90s night at the Bishop's Palace tonight, the Mid-Somerset Orchestra serenades Street, and Sunday brings Italian feasting to Palace Farm. All under a warm, dry sky that just keeps getting warmer.

📸 AutoFest UK 2026 - Today's featured event

HOT FUZZ - How to Erase a Cathedral

🚸 Wells 20mph scheme redrawn after school road concerns
🪙 Chew Valley treasure heads to the British Museum
♻️ Priddy pupils help Somerset's waste scheme hit 500 school visits
🎾 Clarks Village in Street serves up a summer of sport
⛪ Shepton's parish church seeks leave to fix leaking roofs
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

The UK's only modified car show with its own amateur drift display is marking a big birthday on our doorstep. AutoFest UK's 10th anniversary show runs through this weekend at the Bath & West Showground near Shepton Mallet, with gates open 8:30am–5pm today and tomorrow. Ten years in, it has grown into one of the biggest dates in the Showground calendar.

The anniversary edition is the most ambitious yet: new indoor show halls housing more than 60 display cars, super and hypercar line-ups, an indoor Show & Shine competition, RC drifting and simulators, plus the big one — high-speed drift passenger rides for anyone brave enough to belt in.

It's a proper family day out too, with an Inflatable City for the kids, a live bar and restaurant, a big trade marketplace — and dogs are welcome on leads. Day tickets are available via Ticket Tailor or on the gate; see tickettailor.com/events/autofestuk for pricing.

→ Full details at bathandwestshowground.com

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

Every citizen of Wells knows Hot Fuzz, and you’ve pointed out to friends and family every landmark featured in the film. But do you know the full story behind how Wells became one of British cinema's most iconic locations?

It all started with a local boy made good. Edgar Wright was born in Poole, but grew up right here in Wells — and when he sat down to write his action-comedy masterpiece with Simon Pegg, he didn't have to look very far for inspiration. The "seemingly perfect village" of Sandford, with its idyllic market square, its gossipy residents and its unsettling dark underbelly, is essentially Wells in a very thin disguise.

Wright has said it was the city's peculiar combination of extraordinary beauty and small-town insularity that gave him the whole idea. If you've ever wondered whether the film has affection in it as well as satire, the answer is almost certainly yes.

Filming took place over eleven weeks in 2006, and the production took over large chunks of the city centre. The Market Place, the Crown (still proudly billing itself as "The Crown at Sandford"), St Cuthbert's Church, the Bishop's Palace gates, the Swan Hotel, and the back alleys off Sadler Street all featured prominently.

But, the interior of the Crown, where Angel first meets various villagers, was actually filmed at The Royal Standard of England, a pub in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. Only the exterior shots are your local.

Then, of course, Wells is technically a city, and what makes it a city is that rather magnificent great cathedral sitting in the middle of it. Since the entire premise of the film rests on Nicholas Angel being banished to a sleepy rural village, a 12th-century Gothic cathedral visible in every Market Place shot was something of a giveaway.

The solution? Ten visual effects artists were hired specifically to digitally erase the cathedral's spires and towers from every exterior scene where they appeared in the background. Sandford had to look ordinary. Wells Cathedral is, by any definition, not “ordinary”.

There's a lovely personal Easter egg tucked into the film as well. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot Edgar Wright himself making a cameo as a shelf-stacker in the old Somerfield supermarket. That's not just a random bit of fun. Wright actually worked as a shelf-stacker in that exact Wells supermarket as a teenager. He cast himself in the role as a quiet nod to anyone who remembered him from his Wells days.

Twenty years on, the film still draws a steady stream of pilgrims. The Crown runs a dedicated Hot Fuzz page, Wells Walking Tours offer sell-out location tours on summer weekends, and the BBC was still reporting on the film's tourism impact as recently as January 2026, the twentieth anniversary year.

Oh, and if you think that erasing the cathedral was an indignity, you can at least spot it doing honest screen work in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), where the Chapter House staircase doubled as the entrance to Whitehall Palace. Same city, rather different take!

Wells city councillors have asked Somerset Council to redesign the city's proposed 20mph scheme after key roads — including routes past schools — were left out of the first draft. Councillors want the slower limit extended so the zone actually covers the streets where children walk to school. The revised plan will now go back for further work before it returns for approval.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

Coins from the Chew Valley Hoard — silver pennies of Harold II and William I unearthed locally and now in Somerset's museum collection — will be displayed alongside the Bayeux Tapestry when it returns to England for the first time in nearly 1,000 years. The South West Heritage Trust is loaning the hoard to the British Museum's once-in-a-generation exhibition, opening 10 September. The hoard is thought to have been buried during unrest in the South West just after the 1066 Conquest.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

Somerset Council's Schools Against Waste programme, run by the Carymoor Environmental Trust, marked its 500th school visit at Priddy & St Lawrence's Federation School. Since 2018 the scheme has reached more than 200 primary schools and 71,000 children with hands-on workshops on food waste, plastics, composting and recycling. The council reckons around 41% of the average Somerset rubbish bin could still be recycled at the kerbside.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

Clarks Village is turning its lawns over to free sporting fun this summer: a giant inflatable World Cup goal and prize wheel on weekends until 19 July, and Wimbledon loungers with built-in mini TVs screening live tennis until 12 July — with strawberries and cream, and a gelato cart today from noon. In August the orange "Lightning Loop" mini F1 track for 4–10-year-olds arrives on the Shoemakers Museum lawn, a nod to Somerset's own Lando Norris.

Read full story → (Somerset Leveller)

The Grade I-listed Church of St Peter and St Paul in Shepton Mallet has applied to replace the lead roofs over both aisles, which now leak even in light rain — buckets are catching drips inside the town-centre church. A previous permission for the south aisle lapsed before work could start. The town council's planning committee considers the application on Tuesday 7 July, with Somerset Council making the final decision.

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 4 July 2026

A cracking weekend for being outdoors: sunny intervals and a fresh westerly breeze today with highs of 21°C, then warmer and calmer on Sunday at 24°C. The dry, sunny theme holds all week, building to a hot 28°C by Wednesday — no rain in sight, but UV and pollen levels are high, so pack the sun cream and the hay fever tablets.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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