And finally…

Hot air balloon interrupts Sussex kids cricket match

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As always I like a balloon based rural story! This tells us:

We’ve heard of rain or bad light stopping play, but never a hot air balloon.

But that is exactly what happened during a cricket match in West Sussex.

Chiddingfold U10s were playing Blackheath U10s at Lurgashall, in Chichester, when the interruption occurred.

Jim Stather, who was watching the match and filmed the scene on Wednesday evening, said: “It came swooping over the roof tops and landed on the pitch whilst the children were playing cricket. I have never seen anything like this.”

Powys: Spoof £25,000 airport sign makes a welcome return

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I know this is a story from Wales but it’s so good I had to include it in and finally…..

It is the mid Wales landmark that started out as a joke and lasted for 20 years.

Now, it is making a comeback.

Up until last November, there was a billboard for Llandegley International on the A44 in Powys between Rhayader and Kington.

But drivers who followed the directions to Terminal 1 or 3 ended up not at an airport, not even an airfield, but just a field on the outskirts of the village.

The sign was taken down last year when the man who spent £25,000 keeping it in place decided he would try to make it an official landmark.

Nicholas Whitehead launched a crowdfunding campaign with the slogan “give us a sign”.

Six months later, a brand-new one has appeared.

The airport’s “founder” said he was delighted.

“When the sign came down we gained thousands of followers on Facebook. There was so much support for getting another, I felt sure the crowd-funder would work,” he said.

The Duchess of York on adopting the Queen’s corgis following her death

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Just in case you wondered what had happened to the Queen’s corgis…..

The Duchess of York said she “spoils” the corgis she and the Duke of York adopted following the death of the Queen in September.

Elizabeth II owned more than 30 corgis during her reign and was known for her love of the breed.

The late monarch received the two dogs, Muick and Sandy, as gifts from Andrew and have now been taken on by her son and his ex-wife Sarah.

“I am their favourite but everybody always says it’s just because I feed them gravy bones. I love everything about them and I spoil them the most.”

In early 2021, the Queen was given two new puppies, one dorgi and one corgi, as a gift by Andrew while staying at Windsor during lockdown.

The puppies kept the monarch entertained while the Duke of Edinburgh was in hospital – and Buckingham Palace and the royals were dealing with the fallout from the Sussexes’ Oprah interview.

The Queen named the dorgi Fergus after her uncle – who was killed in action during the First World War, and the corgi Muick, pronounced Mick, after Loch Muick on the Balmoral estate.

But the monarch was devastated when five-month-old Fergus died just weeks later, in the aftermath of Philip’s death.

He was later replaced with a new corgi puppy, from Andrew and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie for her official 95th birthday, who the Queen named Sandy.

Rare Edward III gold coins found in Hambleden hoard

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As an enthusiastic history buff I am regularly excited by these stories of real treasure turning up in rural settings. This story tells us:

A coin expert said his eyes lit up when he saw 12 “rare” medieval gold coins, discovered with 616 silver pennies hidden in the wake of the Black Death.

The hoard was found during a metal detecting rally at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire in April 2019.

British Museum curator Barrie Cook said there had been only 12 known examples of the 1346 and 1351 Edward III gold nobles before the 2019 finds.

The coins have been declared treasure by Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court.

The hoard was unearthed by seven detectorists during Spring Detectival 2019, as first reported by the Bucks Free Press.

Dr Cook said the pandemic delayed identification, while he was also faced by the puzzle of whether he was looking at two separate hoards – one of gold coins and one of silver – and “until I look at them in detail, I couldn’t make that judgement”.

He is now convinced the same “poor bloke or woman – it could have been a woman – put this very large sum of money in a hiding place and couldn’t go back to it, so probably died”.

UK inflation rate calculator: How much are prices rising for you?

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You can now work out your personal inflation rate, not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing!!

Every month there’s a new figure for inflation – it estimates how much prices are rising across all the goods and services in the economy.

In the 12 months to November 2022 the figure was 10.7%. That means things costing £1 in November 2021 cost more than £1.10 the same time the following year.

Our personal inflation calculator, built by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in collaboration with the BBC, shows you what the inflation rate is for your household, and identifies the items in your household budget that have gone up the most in price over the past year.

Ancient barn conversion with steam room found at Roman villa in Rutland

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In the current world of deeply dysfunctional forces afflicting rural communities this article, which profiles a sauna like facility in Rutland almost 2000 years ago reminds us of in many senses just how little we have improved our circumstances over the last two millenia. It tells us:

If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, you’d be wrong – probably by 16 or 17 centuries.

Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.

Fresh evidence of the villa owners’ lavish lifestyle comes two years after a family found fragments of ancient pottery on a ramble through farmland in Rutland. Archaeologists from the University of Leicestershire, in partnership with Historic England and Rutland county council, later unearthed a rare mosaic depicting Homer’s Iliad.

The finding – now protected by the government – was described as “the most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century”.

Hoo flood: Burst water main forces pumpkin farm closure

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I felt for this pick your own initiative, pumpkins had recently been giving soft fruits an autumn run for their money but I suspect this will pour cold water on their progress….! On a more serious note I do appreciate how tough things are for the land based industries at the moment and I hope this doesn’t have a lasting negative impact on this farm.

An annual pick-your-own pumpkin event at a farm had to be abandoned after water from a burst main caused a flood.

PYO Pumpkins in Hoo, near Rochester, in Kent, announced the closure on Sunday and promised refunds “in due course”.

The business at Berluncle Farm – which specialises in pumpkins, squashes and globe artichokes – opens every October for its pick-your-own event.

Southern Water said supplies in the area should be back to normal by Sunday night.

PYO Pumpkins said on its website: “You will get your refunds but please bear with us. This many may take 48 hours as we want to speak to our ticketing partners to find the best option for a mass refund.”

A spokeswoman for Southern Water said repairs were under way.

North East Skinny Dip celebrates 10th anniversary

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A classic tale about the onset of autumn with a wonderful rural twist, this story tells us:

Hundreds of naked swimmers ran into the sea at Druridge Bay in Northumberland at sunrise to celebrate the autumn equinox.

The North East Skinny Dip celebrated its 10th anniversary as swimmers of all shapes and sizes braved the North Sea.

The annual event has raised more than £80,000 for mental health charity MIND since people first stripped off and took the plunge in 2012.

Organiser Jax Higginson described the morning as a “celebration of life”.

Larry4Leader: No 10’s Larry the cat ‘enters’ race to become next PM

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Not strictly rural but as a sign of the times and the momentous announcement of a new PM lets hear it for Larry….This story tells us:

Larry was only four years old when he was adopted from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home to begin his new life in politics and has served as a trusted companion to three prime ministers: David Cameron, Theresa May and the outgoing PM, Boris Johnson.

A tweet from Larry’s Twitter account with a picture of the billboard, featuring the cat in a union flag tie below his slogan, quickly accrued more than 14,000 likes on Saturday.

“Dream come true,” it was captioned, along with the hashtags Larry4Leader and YesWeCat.

Users were quick to spot the billboards that have popped up

Wild bison return to UK for first time in thousands of years

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Another heart warming story to add to my collection of charismatic mega-fauna tales:

Early on Monday morning, three gentle giants wandered out of a corral in the Kent countryside to become the first wild bison to roam in Britain for thousands of years.

The aim is for the animals’ natural behaviour to transform a dense commercial pine forest into a vibrant natural woodland. Their taste for bark will kill some trees and their bulk will open up trails, letting light spill on to the forest floor, while their love of rolling around in dust baths will create more open ground. All this should allow new plants, insects, lizards, birds and bats to thrive.

The Wilder Blean project, near Canterbury, is an experiment to see how well the bison can act as natural “ecosystem engineers” and restore wildlife. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

A more natural woodland should also absorb more carbon, helping to tackle the climate crisis. Global heating was evident as the bison were released, with England in the grip of a heatwave, and the early timing was to allow the bison to reach the shade of the woods before temperatures started to climb.

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