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Issue #58 — Thursday 3 September 2026
Good morning, Mendips! Tonight's the night for indie rock royalty in Frome, as Starsailor bring their 25th-anniversary tour to Cheese & Grain. Elsewhere it's a big week across the hills: a moat, a boat race and a new road-closure row make the news, Shepton Mallet gears up for a LEGO Brick Festival, and the Abbey gears up for a weekend of pilgrimage. Let's get into it.
📅 Featured Event — The Grand Barn Dance - this Saturday
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Wells' moat gets a flotilla · Street traders sound the alarm on B3151 · Shepton Mallet gears up for a Brick Festival
🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry
📖 Featured Article — Free Milk, and a Piano Bar Nobody Can Find
📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast
Featured Event
Put on your dancing shoes —Chew Valley’s biggest charity hoe-down is back, with The Barnstormers, this Saturday, 5th September in Nempnet Thrubwell near Blagdon. Nempnet Pastures hosts its third Grand Barn Dance in aid of The Grand Appeal, supporting Bristol Children's Hospital.
The Barnstormers ceilidh band
It's a cause the host family knows intimately: their daughter Maggie was born with a rare and life-threatening heart condition, and it was the incredible teams at Bristol Children's Hospital and Great Ormond Street that got her through it. Now a thriving seven-year-old, Maggie is the reason this family throws open their barn every year to say thank you—and their last two dances have raised over £10,000 for the cause.
Happy Maggie today - Thanks to Bristol Children’s Hospital
Expect a proper night out for the whole family: live music from Nailsea's own twin-fiddle outfit The Barnstormers, ceilidh dancing, a bar, BBQ, inflatable fun for the kids, on-site camping, and a raffle with prizes and donations welcome.
There's even a prize for best-dressed cowgirl or cowboy, so dig out your gingham shirt, round up the family, and help fill the barn this Saturday for dancing, drinking, and a genuinely great cause. Every penny of profit goes straight to The Grand Appeal.
Nempnett Farm, Nempnett Thrubwell, Blagdon, Bristol BS40 7UZ
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🚣 Wells Moat Boat Race Makes a Splash on Its Return
The Wells Moat Boat Race returned in style on Bank Holiday Monday, with thousands turning out for homemade rafts, live music and a revived fête around the Bishop's Palace moat and Recreation Ground. The event had been in doubt earlier this year after City of Wells Lions Club was left with just three active members, but 18 local volunteers stepped forward to keep the tradition alive. Committee chair Mary Ellis called it "a wonderful day," thanking everyone from rafters to stallholders for pulling together.
🚧 Street Traders Raise Concerns Over B3151 Closure
Traders in Street are warning that poor diversion signage during the ongoing Somerton Road closure could leave visitors thinking the town is shut for business. Councillor Liz Leyshon met High Street traders, Clarks Village and Millfield School representatives to discuss the 24-hour closure, linked to a 280-home development, which is due to lift on Friday, 11 September. Street Traders Association chairman Mark Tobin says the confusion has hit footfall during peak summer visitor season.
👞 Sentimental Shoe Memories Celebrated at Street's Shoemakers Museum
The Shoemakers Museum in Street is marking its first anniversary with an exhibition of 12 shoes donated by local people, each carrying a personal story. Contributions include Pat Snee's retirement Desert Boot, printed with his face after 50 years at Clarks, and Liz Fox's wedding-day Dr Martens boots, worn to a farm wedding she arrived at by tractor. The exhibition runs until 6 September.
🧱 Brick Festival Heads to Shepton Mallet This Month
LEGO fans across the Mendips can look forward to the Shepton Mallet Brick Festival, landing at Bath and West Showground on Sunday, 20 September. Running since 2018, the family event promises large-scale brick displays, speed-building competitions and traders selling loose bricks, retired sets and minifigures, plus a dedicated building area for visitors to create their own masterpieces. Early bird tickets include a free LEGO gift; booking ahead is recommended as the festival regularly sells out.
English Lessons from the
Uxbridge English Dictionary
M
Macaroon
To leave a Scotsman on a desert island.
Macular
Waterproof vampire.
Manchester
A specialist in cosmetic surgery for ladyboys.
Marooned
What a Scotsman says when it's his turn to buy the drinks.
Massachusetts
A large collection of dentures.
Mendips
Cannibal buffet.
Free Milk, and a Piano Bar Nobody Can Find
Before Glastonbury Festival was a globally televised, mud-soaked rite of passage, it was one slightly broke dairy farmer's fairly modest idea to keep the bank manager happy.
Michael Eavis held the very first one on his Worthy Farm in September 1970, having been won over after watching Led Zeppelin play an open-air gig at the Bath Festival of Blues down the road in Shepton Mallet. He called it the Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival, charged a pound a head, and threw in free camping and — this is the genuinely brilliant bit — unlimited free milk straight from his own herd.
About 1,500 people turned up, on the day after Jimi Hendrix died, to watch a line-up headlined by Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex after the Kinks pulled out at the last minute. Eavis still lost money on the whole thing, and paid Bolan's £100 fee off in installments funded by, of all things, his milk profits.
The start of something big - 1970
It stuck around anyway, rebranding a year later as the Glastonbury Fayre — a free festival that introduced the Pyramid Stage and gave the event its permanent name, courtesy of a visitor who'd just read a book insisting Glastonbury was the New Jerusalem. Eavis, ever the pragmatist, went along with it.
Fast forward past five decades of headliners, and the festival's most famous guest arguably wasn't a musician at all. In 2015 the Dalai Lama took to the Pyramid Stage in front of 135,000 sweaty festival-goers, sandwiched somewhere between The Who and Alt-J — a genuinely surreal booking that somehow felt exactly right for Worthy Farm.
Then there's the bit that isn't on any official map. Since 1994, a group of Irish volunteers have quietly dug an entire subterranean bar into a hillside on site, candlelit, complete with a grand piano hauled down from Dublin, and rebuilt every year without a scrap of electricity. Michael Eavis has called it his favourite corner of the whole festival. Officially, it doesn't exist. Unofficially, good luck finding it without a friend who already has.
And if you're picturing the free-spirited free-for-all of 1970, know that those days ended abruptly in 2002, when a fourteen-foot, million-pound "superfence" went up around the entire perimeter after one too many years of gatecrashers scaling, cutting or simply strolling through whatever barrier had been there before. The free milk, sadly, is long gone too.
All week (3–7 September)
Summer Fun on the Farm — Somerset Rural Life Museum, Chilkwell Street, Glastonbury. Drop-in summer activities inspired by the Ways With Wood exhibition; final day Friday, 4 September. Adult £11 | Child £5.25. Details
Thursday, 3 September
Starsailor — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. 25th-anniversary tour — see Featured Event above.
Little Discoverers – Apple Harvest — 10.30am-11.30am, Glastonbury Abbey. Free drop-in printmaking session for under-5s using windfall apples. Details
Walk & Wine Thursday — 6pm-7pm, meet at Wells Market Place. Weekly circular walk for women, finishing at Fosso Lounge for those who fancy a drink. Free. Details
Ad Astra Quiz Night — doors 6pm, quiz 7pm, Ad Astra Cider Barn, Axbridge. £5 a head, teams of up to six, raising funds for the RAFA 2026 Wings Appeal. Details
Friday, 4 September
The Art of the Broom — 10am-12.30pm & 1.30pm-4pm, Abbey House, Glastonbury Abbey. Beginner hand-broom weaving workshop; morning and afternoon sittings, each separately ticketed. Details
Timmy Thunderrock Live — 9pm-11pm, The Kings Head, Wells. Free live pub gig. Details
Beats 'n' Bites — 5.30pm-10pm, The Island, outside the Town Hall, Midsomer Norton. Final instalment of the summer series — live music and community feasting; bring your own food and drink. Free entry.
Saturday, 5 September
Pilgrimage Weekend — 11am-5pm Saturday and Sunday, Glastonbury Abbey. The 102nd annual Anglican and Catholic pilgrimages return with processions, banners and services through the abbey ruins. Details
Oas-is — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. Oasis tribute night, £18.50 advance, all-standing, 14+. Details
Cowsville Hummingbirds — 8.30pm, Bluebird Cafe & Bar, Wedmore. Americana blues trio with three-part harmonies. Free entry, table booking recommended. Details
Sunday, 6 September
Pilgrimage Weekend continues — 11am-5pm, Glastonbury Abbey. See Saturday for details.
Kula Shaker — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. British rock band live. Details
The Light House — 7.30pm, Croscombe Village Hall. Touring theatre show about falling in love and staying in love, hosted by Croscombe Frolics with Take Art. £9-£13. Details
Open Afternoons at St Hugh's Church — 2pm-5pm, Charterhouse on Mendip. The little white Mendip church opens its doors for walkers, with refreshments available. Free. Details
Monday, 7 September
The Abbey at Night: Discovering Bats — 7pm-9pm, Abbey House, Glastonbury Abbey. A rare after-hours chance to learn about and observe the abbey's resident bats. Details
🗓️ Coming Up
Night at the Abbey 2026 — Glastonbury Abbey. Saturday, 12 September. One-day festival featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor, The Blow Monkeys, Alexis Taylor and Phil Hartnoll.
Wells Festival of Literature — Wells. Nine-day festival in October; tickets selling fast, with Jonathan Dimbleby and Lady Hale already sold out.
🎬 This Week at Wells Film Centre
Mutiny [15] — 7:30pm
Spider-Man: Brand New Day [12A] — 7:00pm
Spa Weekend [15] — 3:00pm
The End Of Oak Street [12A] — 3:00pm
The Pout-Pout Fish [PG] — 4:30pm
Coyote Vs. Acme [PG] — 7:30pm
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🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 3 September
Thursday starts cloudy and mostly dry, with cloud breaking in the afternoon for some sunny spells and a high of 23°C. Friday brings a band of showery rain before turning cloudy but largely dry into the afternoon, with a high of 20°C. The weekend looks kinder — Saturday sees variable cloud with longer sunny spells by late afternoon (21°C), and Sunday could be mostly sunny with a high of 24°C. Monday stays settled with sunny intervals and highs around 22°C.
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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.
07912 499433