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Mendiplodocus Daily — Issue #50 — Friday 21 August 2026
Issue #50 | Friday 21 August 2026
Good morning, Mendips! It's a big one this weekend — fairies celebrate 20 years in Wells, medieval life comes to Glastonbury Abbey, a farm day out in the Chew Valley, and enough live music to keep you busy right through to Tuesday. Here's everything you need for the days ahead.
🎉 What Shall We Do For The Weekend? — our weekend picks
🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — a 70mph shock · new ADHD support app · Chew Valley's Farm Bus
Fake Bristol helped win the war
📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast
What Shall We Do For The Weekend?
From Friday afternoon right through to Sunday night, the Mendips have got fairies, knights, flea market bargains and a farmyard full of animals lined up — here's where to be.
🧚 3 Wishes Fairy Festival — Friday to Sunday, Garslade Farm, Wells. Twenty years young this weekend! Three days of family camping, workshops, drumming circles and storytelling, with Friday night headlined by 3 Daft Monkeys. Day tickets available on the gate if you fancy just the one day. → More info
Fairy - nuff!
⚔️ History Adventures: Medieval Life Experience — Saturday and Sunday, 10am-5pm, Glastonbury Abbey. How did medieval Mendip folk tell the time, handle money or treat illness? Find out with three shows a day (11.30am, 1.30pm and 3pm) and a fair amount of gruesome humour thrown in. → More info
🎭 Tri.art West Side Story — Friday 7-9pm and Saturday matinee 2-4pm, Merlin Theatre, Frome. Frome's own youth dance and performing arts academy takes on West Side Story — always worth backing your local young talent. → More info
🚜 Community Farmer Day — Saturday, 10am-3pm, The Community Farm, Chew Valley. Meet the animals, tour the fields and hear how the farm's community-supported model works — a proper down-to-earth family morning out. → More info
🗃️ Giant Flea Market — Sunday, Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet. One of the region's biggest — hundreds of stalls of antiques, collectibles and bargains under one roof. Bring a big bag and an empty boot. → More info
Shepton’s Giant Flea Market
🏰 Bishop's Palace Summer Late Openings — Friday, 6-8pm (last entry 7.30pm), Wells. The quieter pick: bring a picnic and have the gardens to yourself once the day-trippers have gone home. £8.75 adults, £4.40 children. → More info
However you spend it, get out there and enjoy it, Mendips — see you Monday!
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📰 Hot News - Mendips Style
🚗 Glastonbury Driver Clocked At 70mph In 20mph Zone
A driver was clocked doing 70mph on Coursing Batch in Glastonbury — more than three times the 20mph limit. The reading has prompted councillors to call for a rethink of how the zone is signed and enforced.
📱 New Digital App Launched To Support Somerset ADHD Patients
Patients experiencing ADHD symptoms in Somerset are set to benefit from ConnectPlus, a new free digital app developed by Somerset NHS Foundation Trust's adult ADHD service with technology partner HCI — the first app of its kind used by an adult ADHD service in England. It offers appointment tracking, note-taking and a personalised pathway section, alongside wider support covering mental health, financial wellbeing and access to local and national services.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Kate Franklin said the app is “a companion for our patients across all parts of the pathway,” providing trusted, myth-busting information from the very start of someone's ADHD journey. It's available to all Somerset patients now via the App Store, searching “CONNECTPlus.”
🚌 Chew Magna's Pony Farm Bus Brings Food Learning On The Road
The Chew Magna-based Pony Group has built and launched an interactive Farm Bus to drive awareness of how our food is grown. Founded by siblings Josh Eggleton MBE and Holly Eggleton, the project turned a vintage double-decker into a mobile farm, funded through chef-led dinners at The Pony featuring names like Tom Kerridge and a crowdfunder that has raised over £30,000 towards its £100,000 target, in partnership with Arthur David.
The bus is fitted out with a hydroponic growing system, planters, a demonstration platform, kitchen and dining areas and a library of resources for cooking classes and workshops. The plan is to visit 25 schools a year, reaching around 2,500 children, plus monthly visits to community groups and festivals working with charities and organisations including the NHS.
🛠 Street Men's Shed Teaches Young Woodworkers To Build Bird And Bat Boxes
Street & Walton Men's Shed is running a bird box and bat box building workshop for children aged 8 and over at the Quaker Meeting House in Street this Saturday morning, with each young woodworker taking their finished box home for a £5 donation. The session runs alongside the group's regular Street Repair Cafe next door.
English Lessons from the
Uxbridge English Dictionary
H
Hippocampus
A very large gay cat.
History
A male alibi.
Ho-hum
The sound made by a vibrating garden tool.
Hollyhock
The act of pawning Christmas decorations.
Homogeneous
Gay and bright.
Hooray
The output from a sonic screwdriver.
The Fake Bristol on Top of the Mendips:
How Black Down Fooled the Luftwaffe
If you've ever walked up to Beacon Batch, between Cheddar and Burrington, on a wet Sunday and wondered what those three brick huts and the strange grid of little mounds are doing up there — sit down. This is one of the most audacious stories the Mendips have ever kept quiet.
In the winter of 1940, with Bristol taking a nightly hammering from the Luftwaffe, the Air Ministry hired a film crew. Not to record the war, but to fight it. Colonel John Turner — an unflappable Royal Engineer with a taste for the theatrical — enlisted specialists from Shepperton Film Studios to help him build fake burning cities. His original code for these town decoys was "SF", for Special Fire. Someone somewhere misread the initials as Starfish and the name stuck.
The very first one was built on Black Down, high above Cheddar. Four miles from Bristol, treeless, flat enough to stage-manage — the Mendips' bleakest plateau was suddenly a soundstage. Two concrete bunkers full of Coventry Climax petrol generators powered a grid of glow boxes laid out to mimic the streetlights and railway sidings of central Bristol. When enemy planes were spotted, volunteers flicked switches and tanks of diesel and creosote were dripped onto water to erupt in fireballs that looked, from 12,000 feet up on a moonless night, exactly like an incendiary raid.
And the German bombers, thank goodness, kept falling for it. Later waves, arriving to "finish off" a city they thought was already burning, tipped their loads onto empty moorland instead. Historian Colin Dobinson later crunched Turner's own records and reckoned Britain's Starfish network — which by war's end numbered around 800 sites — drew roughly 968 tons of German bombs away from real targets.
All that remains - Black Down bunker
One Black Down bunker still carries the dent where a 500-pound landmine went off just outside. It shook the walls. It missed the operators. For good measure, the Mendips plateau was also given a battery of Z guns near the modern raceway, rocket launchers that fired trailing wires up into the bomb stream to snag propellers.
Curiously, a 1992 archaeological survey of the site found no craters at all — the moorland having quietly healed itself in fifty years of rain and heather. What survives is the scheduled monument itself (Scheduled 2003, Monument 33064): two concrete control bunkers, an air-raid shelter, and around 1,700 little earth mounds set out in a neat grid across the top of the hill. Fake streets, for a fake Bristol, on a fake starless night. It worked — and on your next walk to Beacon Batch, you can stand in the middle of a top-secret film set that helped save the real city below.
All week
Mythical Creatures Trail — Wells Cathedral, daily 9am-4.30pm, until 1 September. Family trail hunting dragons and griffins around the Cathedral, included with admission. More info
Summer Fun on the Farm — Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, Tue-Sun. Galleries, crafts and visiting animals for the school holidays. More info
School Summer Holidays at The Bishop's Palace — Wells, until 2 September. Splash Play Zone, family trail and craft workshops, included with admission. More info
Friday, 21 August
3 Wishes Fairy Festival opens — Garslade Farm, Wells. 20th anniversary weekend begins, headlined tonight by 3 Daft Monkeys — see Weekend Planner above.
Mendip Mini Fests opens — Mendip Basecamp, Churchill. Three-day mini festival — SOLD OUT, but the weekend's underway if you've already got a ticket. More info
Meare Weekender opens — Meare Recreation Field, near Glastonbury. Community weekender kicks off — details thin on the ground, worth a look nearer the day. More info
Tri.art West Side Story — 7-9pm, Merlin Theatre, Frome. Final evening performance — see Weekend Planner above.
Bishop's Palace Summer Late Openings — 6-8pm, Wells — see Weekend Planner above.
Beats 'n' Bites — 5.30-10pm, The Island, outside the Town Hall, Midsomer Norton. Live music and bring-your-own community feasting on trestle tables. Free entry.
Mini Beast Hunts — 2-4pm, Main Abbey, Glastonbury Abbey. Drop-in family bug hunting. More info
Open Mic Night — 6.30pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. All welcome to get up and play. More info
80's Night (All Over 80s Live) — 8pm, The King Arthur, Glastonbury. Live 80s covers band. More info
Day Trip to SLiMBRIDGE — departing Shepton Mallet. Community coach trip to the Wetland Centre. More info
Saturday, 22 August
History Adventures: Medieval Life Experience — 10am-5pm, Glastonbury Abbey — see Weekend Planner above.
Community Farmer Day — 10am-3pm, The Community Farm, Chew Valley — see Weekend Planner above.
Tri.art West Side Story matinee — 2-4pm, Merlin Theatre, Frome — see Weekend Planner above.
3 Wishes Fairy Festival continues — Garslade Farm, Wells — see Weekend Planner above.
Mendip Mini Fests continues — Churchill. SOLD OUT.
Meare Weekender continues — Meare Recreation Field.
Street & Walton Men's Shed: Bird Box & Bat Box Workshop — 10am-12pm, Quaker Meeting House, Street. Children 8+ (with an adult) build their own box, £5 donation. More info
Street Repair Cafe — 10am-12pm, Quaker Meeting House, Street. Free — bring your broken bits and pieces. More info
Stone Carving Workshop – Weekend — 9am-5pm Sat-Sun, Abbey House, Glastonbury Abbey. Two-day hand-worked stone carving course. More info
Guided Glastonbury Abbey Tree Walk with Matt Witt — 11am-12.30pm, Main Abbey. Included with admission. More info
Tupenny Opera — The Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury. Original psychedelic/prog-tinged live band. More info
No More All Male Lineups: Take Glastonbury — 7pm-midnight, The King Arthur, Glastonbury. A night of female and non-binary DJ talent. More info
Psychic Fair Glastonbury — Glastonbury Town Hall. Readings, healers and stalls. More info
Sunday, 23 August
History Adventures: Medieval Life Experience concludes — Glastonbury Abbey — see Weekend Planner above.
Giant Flea Market — Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet — see Weekend Planner above.
3 Wishes Fairy Festival concludes — Garslade Farm, Wells — see Weekend Planner above.
Mendip Mini Fests concludes — Churchill. SOLD OUT.
Meare Weekender concludes — Meare Recreation Field.
Dread convention — Glastonbury Town Hall. A celebration of dreadlock culture and community. More info
Summer Sundays at Wells & Mendip Museum — 10am-4pm, 8 Cathedral Green, Wells. Jurassic sea monsters, a WWI trench and the Witch of Wookey. Adults £6, family ticket £12. More info
Open Afternoons at St Hugh's Church — 2-5pm, Charterhouse on Mendip. Free, refreshments available. More info
Cheese and Brain Quiz Night — 6pm, Cheese & Grain (Tree House bar), Frome. General knowledge and a bit of local rivalry. More info
Monday, 24 August
Summer Stay and Make — 11am-1pm, Yeast Scrapstore, Glastonbury. Final session of this summer's run — recycled craft for ages 3-12. More info
Tuesday, 25 August
Family Activity: Leaf Print Tote Bags — 11am-1pm, Abbey Museum, Glastonbury Abbey. Drop-in craft session making a leaf-print tote bag. More info
🗓️ Coming Up
The Toasters – Live at the Tree House — Cheese & Grain, Frome. Friday 28 August. More info
Wells Moat Boat Race — Bishop's Palace Moat, Wells. Monday 31 August (bank holiday). Rescue Race, Bishop's Cup, junior sprint and Best Raft Design/Fancy Dress awards — team entries have closed, but spectators are welcome. More info
Glastonbury Last Saturday Market — Market Place, Glastonbury. Saturday 29 August.
Vicky Jackson: Pink — Cheese & Grain, Frome. Sunday 30 August. More info
🎬 This Week at Wells Film Centre
We couldn't pull a fresh, up-to-date listing from the Wells Film Centre website this run — it returned old cached content again. Please check wellsfilmcentre.co.uk directly for this week's showtimes.
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🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 21–25 August
It's shaping up to be a cracking one for the weekend — Friday and Saturday bring sunny intervals with highs of 19-20°C, and Sunday turns properly sunny with a high of 23°C. The bank holiday build-up on Monday stays warm and mostly bright before a few light showers move in on Tuesday. Sun cream for the festivals, a light layer for the evenings.
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Contact Mendy the Mendiplodocus
Paul Branston, Editor
Hi, I'm Paul Branston and I publish the Mendiplodocus every morning, Monday to Saturday. Each issue goes out to a growing base of thousands of local residents who want to keep up to date with events and local news. If you have events or news to share or you have a local business to promote, please get in touch.
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