End of an era for Hatherleigh market
It is the end of an era for Hatherleigh as the final livestock auctions are held in the market. Vicks the auctioneers are hanging up their gavel and selling the site to property developer Kingswood Homes. As you drive into the town, you are greeted by the sign ‘Hatherleigh: an ancient market town’. The town itself dates back to 879 and in 1220, a charter was granted by Henry III for weekly market. You won’t find many much older in the...
30,000 mile pub crawl that started with a pint on Dartmoor
A man has driven a sports car across 21 countries, starting at the most northerly pub in the world and finishing at the most southerly – the idea coming to him while having a drink in a pub on Dartmoor. Ben Coombs, 38, from Plymouth, drove 30,000 miles across three continents from the Arctic Circle to the southernmost tip of Chile. It took him seven months to complete the challenge. The journey started on the Norwegian island of...
Bryony Frost becomes first ever ambassador for Jockey Club
Fast-rising star jockey Bryony Frost has been announced as a group-wide ambassador for Jockey Club Racecourses. Buckfastleigh-based Bryony has lit up British racecourses this season with a string of brilliant rides, her first Grade 1 victory and a winning smile to match, helping her to become one of the most popular faces in the sport. The partnership is the first of its kind for Jockey Club Racecourses, which stages the likes of The...
View from the Whitehouse
One of the oddest things about being a professional comedian is not that you live in a twilight world of madness and stupidity; you get used to that. I’m also dyslexic and frequently wonder why life keeps giving me melons… The strangest thing is that folk will keep asking you to perform for free. In my case, being a vicar as well, they probably assume that God will pay but while God may be love and compassion, He’s a bit like...
That’s not my badger!
My background is in environmental education and this is a subject that I think is more important than ever right now. As a race we have become so bogged down in the daily running of our lives that we form a bubble around ourselves that appears to limit our vision of the wider world. I am guilty of this too, sometimes. You can forget that there is so much beauty and wonder in the world if you only stop to take a moment. As children,...
