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Gossip around the village pump.

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Wotton Area CAN Update Jan22

Public Meetings

We have reinstated our public meetings…below are the next two that are planned.

  • Thursday 3rd February Retrofit & Heat Pumps
  • Thursday 7th April Transport..Electric Vehicles & Bikes

Our meetings are held at U.T.E.A (the Chipping Hall) Wotton-under-Edge at 8pm.

As far as possible they are COVID secure, with tables set 2mtrs apart and we recommend people to wear face masks. Give us a nudge if you are coming at wottonareacan@gmail.com 

All are welcome.

Wotton Area Climate Action Group

Website:-  www.wottonareacan.org

Email:-   Wottonareacan@gmail.com

Toads

Great Migration of Stinchcombe 2022

Our own Great Migration

If you think that jaw dropping Wildlife is only to be found overseas, in Stinchcombe we are blessed with our own Great Migration – the annual return of amphibians to their ancestral ponds.  On warm(ish) wet nights in early spring, hundreds of toads (and some frogs and newts) make their way across fields, hedges, ditches, woods to the ponds where they spawned to mate.  We probably wouldn’t know it was happening if it wasn’t for something else they have to cross: the roads.  If you’re driving down around St Cyr’s at the right time, it is very much the wrong time- the lanes are littered with the little creatures and it is nigh on impossible not to squash them.  Unless of course, some kind humans help them.

GlosToR
GlosToR – Stinchcombe Church Road

Toad Patrol

For quite a few years now, Stinchcombe has been blessed with a strong team of volunteer Toad Patrollers who keep a weather eye on the lanes and are ready to grab raincoats and buckets to collect up the toads on the roads.  It is now time to put together the team for 2022.  It’s an interesting way to spend a February early evening – enjoying the full moon, the stars, owls, badgers, foxes, mice as well as the various amphibians on our patch, and social distancing is so easy!

Gloucestershire Toads On Roads

Tramping up and down the lane on cold, damp nights is not for everyone and there is no guarantee that you will see a toad but there are other ways to help out; investigating sightings, putting up posters etc.  If you would like to help out this year, please let me know. 

Even better, sign up to Gloucestershire Toads On RoadsGlosTOR– a county organisation linked to the national Amphibian Charity Froglife.  They coordinate all the toad crossings in our county and provide guidance as well as feeding our results into the national database for important conservation work.  You can sign up to GlosTor here: 2021 GlosTor Signup Form.  If you have signed up before, please do so again- they don’t reuse contact details from previous years

We are in Stroud District and our crossing is Stinchcombe Church Road.  They will then put you in touch with me as Patrol Manager (one of my favourite descriptions) and I’ll be in touch with more information.

Jayne K.

Carol-Singing-snow

Carol Singing round the village

Dear Everyone,

As previously mentioned, we will be carol singing round the village on various evenings between now and Christmas Eve.  It would be grand if we could get to every house!

It will of course depend on weather and who is available but the plan is:

  1. Tuesday 7th Wick Lane far end.  Meeting at Manor Lodge 6.30pm
  2. Wednesday 8th – Hounds Green/The Street 6.30pm- meeting at Street Farm.  Richard and Jane have kindly offered to warm us all up afterwards with some mulled wine at Street Farm  (please let Jayne know if you are coming!)
  3. Monday 13th – Taits Hill Road 6.30pm meeting on the pavement near Vale Vets (closer to the first houses so we don’t have so far to walk 😁)
  4. Friday 17th – Echo Lane and Wick Lane -meeting at the Church 6.30pm   Pippa has kindly offered to warm us all up afterwards with some mulled wine at Church Farm House (please let Jayne  know if you’re coming!)
  5. Monday 20th – The rest of the Street 6.30pm (may start a little earlier for Jess’s children to join in- TBC)
  6. Tuesday 21st – Clingre Down and the bits of Taits Hill Road we missed
  7. Wednesday 22nd – Anywhere we’ve missed
  8. Thursday 23rd – Stinchcombe Manor and Yercombe Lodge  (TBC)  We won’t be going inside but singing outside the care home’s windows. Will confirm times with the homes.  Likely to be a little earlier than the others.

These dates are when Ian and Jayne will be going carolling and would love you to join us as often as you want to.  If you need further information please call Jayne on 07711 568661

Ho Ho Ho

Jayne Kirkham

Christmas Fayre 21

Christmas Fayre 21

A successful Fayre

The Village Hall Christmas Fayre 2021 was another great success last week-end despite any trial and tribulations due to COVID precautions. One must congratulate the Village Hall committee for putting on such a good annual event which is growing each year. I hear people are already booking for next!

Plenty of local crafts and produce and plenty of local craftswomen and men.

Just some of the comments:

  • Lovely morning at the craft fayre, really great stalls and nice to see so many people there 😊 xx
  • Superb craft fayre! Thank you to the organisers and stall holders, had a good wander around and came away with some lovely items 😃
  • Great stalls, got some beautiful watercolour prints which I can’t wait to hang. Also lovely knitwear for the kiddies.
  • And we had a lovely Cornish pasty! Great job.
  • I bought a lovely tree 🎄🎄
  • I bought some lovely Christmas presents . Only wish I had stay for tea and cake . 🍰🍰

server

Bitcoin Mining – What a waste!

Bitcoins – What a waste!

So, we have all heard of Bitcoins. Even if most of us don’t really understand what they are or even why you would want one. And I definitely would not know how to spend one. Most people understand that Bitcoins are a Crypto currency which people of suspicious character demand from you when they hold computers to ransom.

What people don’t know is how Bitcoins are manufactured. According to Bitcoin.org

“New bitcoins are generated by a competitive and decentralized process called “mining”. This process involves that individuals are rewarded by the network for their services. Bitcoin miners are processing transactions and securing the network using specialized hardware and are collecting new bitcoins in exchange. “

So, to cut a long story short, ANYONE with a computer and the right software can “Mine” for bitcoins. It just means leaving your computer on all the time! In practice however, people set up servers and server farms JUST to do this.

If fact this has become such a large industry, that Bitcoin mining now consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. To put this into context the UK generated 64.3 terawatt hours of electricity from all wind power in 2019.

What a waste!

Cheese

Something Cheesy

Christmas Cheese

At the talk on our tabletop tombstones in St Cyrs a few months ago, a couple of people asked me about the local cheeses that were served.  As Christmas is coming, and with it the need to consume vast quantities (just me?) of port and Christmas cake, which both, as we know, taste even better with a little cheese, here is a bit more information about those local cheeses.

Cerney Ash

One of the original goats cheeses produced in the UK and has won numerous awards, including the 2015 World Cheese Awards’ Best goat Cheese. 

Cerney Cheese was started and continues to be run by Lady Isabel Angus.  Having developed a love for French cheeses, she persuaded a local French farmer’s wife to teach her the basics of cheese-making.  Armed with the basics, and aided by her two goats, she began experimenting.  The intention was never to sell to the public, just to make use of land and enjoy some self-sufficiency.  But when she moved to North Cerney in 1983, a local villager persuaded Isabel to let him sell twelve cheeses. They flew off the shelves and Cerney Cheese was born.

Kelston Park

Like the goat cheese story above, people tend to think of soft cheese as a French import but the soft Bath Cheese was well known in the 18th and 19th centuries.  It was even recommended to Admiral Lord Nelson in a letter from his father, written shortly after Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Copenhagen: 


    “My dear Horatio,
    On Tuesday next I intend (God willing) to leave Bath and tho’ not very strong, yet, hope to reach Lothian on Thursday, as I must remain a few days in London. As let me not interrupt any of your engagements. 
    Recollecting that Sir William and Lady Hamilton seemed gratified by the flavour of a cream cheese, I have taken the liberty of sending 2 or 3 cheeses of Bath manufacture. 
    I am my dear son, your most affectionate
    Edmund Nelson”

In 1990 farmer dairy farmer Graham Padfield tracked down the recipe for Bath cheese and revived his grandmother’s cheesemaking business at Park Farm near Kelston, Bath.  The recipe stipulates that the cheese, soft and covered with white mould, must be made with full cream milk, that salt be sprinkled on the young cheeses with the aid of a feather. 

Bath Soft Cheese is sold in blocks and is delicious, especially if you leave it a couple of weeks to ripen fully.

But they found a quirk in making the cheese into a deeper rounded shape: the original mushroomy flavour of Bath cheese and becomes lighter and more citrus.  They call this Kelston Park and it is delicious.

Bath Soft cheese Company also make Bath Blue.  Likened to Stilton, it is a classic blue veined cheese, ripened for 8-10 weeks.  In the 2014-15 World Cheese Awards, it beat nearly 2,600 cheeses from 33 countries to be crowned overall champion.

Single Gloucester

In 1994 single Gloucester was awarded Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.  It can only be made on Gloucestershire farms which have a herd of Old Gloucester cows, one of the rarest cattle breeds in the country.  Jonathan Crump at Standish Park Farm near Eastington is one of only six cheese makers producing Single Gloucester.  He is the only one that uses ONLY Old Gloucester cows’ milk and both his cows and his cheeses have won awards.

To taste, Single Gloucester is creamy and buttery with a fresh citrus finish and I have heard people say that it is so much better than Double Gloucester and that is why it is so rare.  Which is quite funny because, being quick and easy to produce, taking only 8 weeks to mature,  traditionally it was used as part payment to farm workers.  The good stuff was the Double Gloucester which takes three months to mature and was the cheese that commanded the highest price.

Double Gloucester

Jonathan Crump says this taking twice as long to mature as its cheaper sibling is the reason for Double Gloucester’s name but there are other theories:  that the creamy milk had to be skimmed twice; that the cream from the morning milk was added to the evening milk; that the truckle is typically twice the height.  Whatever, this was the cheese that was sent to markets and shops for people to display on their dinner tables. The addition of carrot juice gave it the Wow factor colour.

And for extra Wow and probably ‘ouch’ and the sound of ambulance sirens and much jollity, Double Gloucester is the cheese used every year at Cooper’s Hill for the cheese-rolling and wake.  The first person to reach the bottom of the 50% gradient 180m slope wins the cheese.

If you have only tasted supermarket Double Gloucester, you are probably thinking ‘meh’.  Try some of Jonathan Crump’s.  It is unpasturised and made from organic milk from cows grazed on permanent pasture with hay only for winter feed.   Once tasted, you’ll probably be tempted to run down Coopers Hill in the hope of winning the truckle.  Safer, although not so entertaining for the spectators, is to go and see if they have some for sale in Leaf and Ground.

more info:

www.cerneycheese.co.uk
www.parkfarm.co.uk
www.jonathancrumpsgloucestercheeses.co.uk

Jayne Kirkham

What’s YOUR favourite Local Cheese?

Please add your favourite local cheeses in the Comments below and why and where you can buy.

Lucy McDonald

Stinchcombe has a world record holder!

Lucy McDonald: world record holder

Lucy McDonald has set a new world record for Junior Power Lifting in the under 25 years old and 67.5kg body weight.

She set the British Records in the summer for Squat 165kg, Bench Press 85kg and Deadlift 185kg and so also became the Total British Record Holder with 435kg.

In competition at the GPC (Global Powerlifting Committee) British Championship last week-end, she broke her own records and lifted Squat 187.5kg, Bench Press 95.5kg and Deadlift 185.5kg

She now has the World Records for the Bench Press and the Total lifted (468.5kg)

Lucy was born and still lives in the village. She is now a qualified personal trainer instructor and works at Severn Plus at South Woodchester helping youngsters with learning needs.

Lucy at Work
Lucy McDonald at work as Fitness Trainer at Westonbirt. Picture from SevernPlus

I’m told that she is also handy with a chainsaw!

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