Champions of England

Felton Eccles
The weekend of the 17th of August 2007 saw another huge event in the tug of war calendar, the UK championships had arrived.They were held in Mold, Wales and as with most big competitions its was raining.

The day started with a short opening ceremony, followed by the start of the men's 680 kilos. England A were represented by Bosley, and England B were represented by Felton Eccles. The final gave a close first end, in which Felton had to defend very hard against Bosley. Felton managed to grind down the A team and took the first end that lasted around 5 minutes.

On the second End, Felton gained some momentum off the drop, and took the end in 1 minute 30 seconds to secure the gold medal. On Sunday the open competition took place where Felton Eccles entered into the 680kgs event. They managed to win gold in this as well beating Congleton by 2 straight ends. The next big event for Felton Eccles is the European Championships, which are being held in Minehead over 4 days starting on the 19th of September where they will be representing England at 640kgs.

The mighty Publow Farm oak

The huge old oak tree at Publow Farm
The magnificent old Publow Farm oak tree has finally been added to the official list of Britain's champion trees, after years of mysterious omission from the records held by the Tree Register and others.

It wasn't included in 'The Champion Trees of Britain and Ireland' (By Dr Owen Johnson, 2003) and wasn't on the on-line databases held by The Tree Register, despite the comment from the late expert Alan Mitchell that by some criteria it could be regarded as the sixth biggest English oak (Quercus robur) in England.

This comment was published in 'The Natural History of the Chew Valley' in 1987, and was based on a measurement in 1985 which recorded the tree trunk's circumference as 32 foot 4 inches, at five foot above ground level. When measured on July 31 2007 (when this photo was taken) it was recorded at 33 foot 6 inches. This means that if it had grown at a constant rate over its lifetime, the tree would be over 1,000 years old. Calculations based on figures from great veteran oaks at Windsor Park would suggest a similar figure.

However, oak trees don't grow at a constant rate: they grow faster when they are younger, and it also may well be that this oak has grown at a faster rate than the Windsor oaks. So it's possible the tree might be rather less than a thousand years old. But it's still in great shape, and should be good for many years yet, as the current management (which does not allow tractors underneath the tree) is very sympathetic. There is no right of way in the field where the tree grows, but it can be seen well from a footpath in the next field. The path is the one which cuts across from Parsonage Lane to Blackrock Lane.

View details of the tree on the Ancient Tree Hunt site at
http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/recording/tree.htm?tree=eELKsZjZu06A6Kb%2b0%2bR08g

To register an ancient tree, go to www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk

Words and photo by Rowland Janes

It's all happening at Harptrees Festival

Sherlock Holmes
The Harptrees Festival, September 21 to 23, offers a whole weekend of pleasure and thrills for people of all ages. The highlight of the weekend is the Saturday night theatre and this year it is a superb one-man play by David Stuart Davies, starring Roger Llewellyn, entitled 'Sherlock Holmes - The Last Act'.

When it was performed at Edinburgh this was described as 'one of the top ten fringe plays' Roger Llewellyn's career is a distinguished one, including Shakespeare at Stratford and London, as well as West End musicals and television. To have theatre of such quality here in the Chew Valley is indeed fortunate and it offers everyone a wonderful opportunity to enjoy high quality entertainment.

The festival has more than thirty other events taking place, including a Poetry Exchange evening, workshops for drawing, playing the didgeridoo, singing, dancing and film making and a gig with PostWarSpain as headline act. After cream teas on Sunday there is a once in a lifetime opportunity to take part in history by being involved in the Tourney. This is a game which has not been seen in the Harptrees for over a hundred years and promises to be quite a spectacle. To find out more about the events, many of which are free thanks to generous sponsorship, look out for the colourful programmes or visit the website www.harptreesfestival.org

Heights of success up pole

The local father and son pole climbing team of Alan and Peter Gallop of Chew Magna and Radstock, have achieved new goals in both height and world ranking. After good results over three days at The Great Yorkshire show, held at Harrogate in early June, they were looking forward to The World Championships in the New Forest, unfortunately this show fell victim to the weather and had sponsorship problems, thus it was cancelled.

Alan and Peter travelled to Wales in mid July to challenge the might of the strong Welsh climbers, on their home ground. The competition was for the European 100ft Open Championships, these poles are an extra 20ft higher than in previous competitions and are the only 100ft poles in Great Britain. Three qualifying rounds and the final all within seven hours made this the toughest test they had faced so far.

They did not beat the Welsh boys but did put up some performances, Peter in fourth place and Alan in sixth behind the current world champions. Peter¹s current record status is: World Championships 80ft 6th place. European Championships 100ft 4th place. British Championships [Newark] 80ft 6th place. British Championships [Yorkshire] 80ft 3rd place. His personal bests are 80ft in 14.1 seconds 100ft in 21.0 seconds Alan's current record status is: World Championships 80ft 7th place. He is Veteran World, European and British Champion. All those interested can find out more at www.poleclimbing.org.uk

New building for Winford Pre-school

Tuesday August 21 was a very big day for Winford Village Pre-school. Their long awaited new classroom arrived and was put into place on school grounds, causing mild chaos within Winford, and much excitement for the children. Winford Village Pre-school has been operating out of the Village Hall for very many years, and whilst we are enormously grateful to have been using this facility, it has not been suitable for our needs for some time.

Over the past 5 years the committee (staffed differently each year) has been actively fundraising in order to secure a new purpose built building on school grounds for the pre-school, and we have finally completed stage 1 - getting the building here. Having this new building will offer us huge benefits: aligning the pre-school start time with school start time, meaning parents no longer have to come back and forth within half an hour, better intergration with school, safer playing environment, etc.

The building will also offer a purpose built kitchen, a staff area, cloakroom area, large play area and a soft quiet area for those children (and staff!) who find the noise too much! North Somerset County Council have very generously donated the Portable Class Room and we are very grateful to them for the saving this has made for us. We have raised £53,000, which is finally enough to get the building here, but our final target is £81,000, so our fundraising will continue for some time. A huge thank you to all those who have helped us get this far. Ffi see www.winfordpreschool.org.uk

Pam Sayer

Slow broadband in rural areas (letter to the editor)
Readers may remember the fuss we were all making four years ago when none of the local telephone exchanges were enabled for broadband, and we were campaigning to get BT to upgrade them.

It didn't take all that long, and then everyone shut up about it, assuming it was problem solved. However, have we overlooked a continuation of the issue of rural disadvantage, in the pitifully slow speeds which valley users have to put with by comparison with 'up to 8Mbps' deals we are being promised by ISPs.

While that's the deal my service provider promises, because of the distance of my line from the exchange BT reckons I am unlikely to even get speeds of 500kbps - less than a tenth of the speeds which are implied in the 'up to 8Mbps' contract with my ISP (PlusNet, which is now owned by BT).

It's usually about 470, sometimes much less. There are obviously other factors, but can anything be done about speeds in rural areas where customers are often a long way from exchanges? Would there any point in a new campaign?

Name and address supplied

If you want to check the speeds you ought to be able to get see http://www.adslchecker.bt.com/pls/adsl/adslchecker.welcome and to see what speeds you are getting see http://www.speedtester.bt.com/

If you have any answers to the above questions, or any comments, please email the editor

Please click on the 'chew valley broadband survey' icon to the left, and fill in and return our five question questionnaire. Thanks.