THE Dorset-based Guild of Fine Food will be heading for Spain for this year’s World Cheese Awards, which will be held in the principality of Asturias, as part of the International Cheese Festival in Oviedo. The awards, now in their 33rd year and one of the world’s most important cheese competitions, will be judged on…
THE Great West Way, running from London to Bristol, roughly along the line of the A4 trunk road, is the world’s first multi-modal touring route, with road, rail and water links between the two cities, a direct distance of 125 miles. If you include the off-the-beaten walking and bike trails and other detours, there are…
IF you were born with the name Codd, raised by a loving, close-knit circle of family and friends, grew up by the sea on the Dorset coast and swam like a mermaid, the last thing you would expect is to develop an all-consuming fear of the creatures that live in the ocean. What are the…
JAMES Crowden, best known to Fine Times Recorder readers and West Country people generally as a local historian, poet and cider expert, was a soldier for some years after leaving university. After he left the Army in 1976, he travelled to one of the most remote and inaccessible countries in the world, the Himalayan kingdom…
DON McCullin, one of the all-time great war photographers and more recently a documenter of rural landscapes, has an important exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, Bruton, running to 4th May. Don McCullin. The Stillness of Life features more than 60 landscape photographs, mapping his intimate relationship with the local landscape of Somerset and continued passion…
A NEW festival celebrating the joys of travel and travel writing has been launched in Somerset, a year to the day before it will open on the Sparkford Hall estate in September 2020. The not-for-profit Vicarious Festival is described as a celebration of cultural diversity and the transformative power of storytelling. With patrons Joanna Lumbye,…
A NEW exhibition of photographs at Tyntesfield near Bristol offers an oblique but fascinating insight into the history of the National Trust’s Gothic Revival mansion and estate near Bristol. Photographer and academic Olli Hellmann has created the series of diptychs and triptychs, called Stow High in Transit, juxtaposing scenes from Tyntesfield and from the remote…
WE went up to Edinburgh for a concert at the festival (John Eliot Gardiner conducting West Side Story, if you are interested, and it was brilliant) and stayed somewhere new to us – Portobello. On the Forth coast, between Leith and Musselburgh, Portobello is a slightly faded 19th century seaside resort that has not been…
MICHAEL Palin, actor, Python, traveller, comedian, writer and broadcaster is coming to Salisbury and Bath on 4th and 7th July with a show coinciding with the paperback release of his acclaimed history and travel book, Erebus: The Story of a Ship. The much-loved globe-trotter and television star will be at Salisbury City Hall on Thursday…
IF you thought Sardinia was just about sun, sea and sand, think again. It’s got all those glorious holiday basics, of course, but this Mediterranean island has plenty more to boot. It’s part of Italy, after all, so it was certain to have layers of history beneath its shiny surface, but it can also boast…