In this issue:

👉 Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss both visited the area at the start of the month: Fanny Charles was at both sessions, and has reported back on the two candidate’s responses on locally-focused questions around planning and farming.

👉Shillingstone is celebrating 100 years of their sports festival – we’ve taken a look at the 1922 festival (the three-legged race was for boys only; girls were allowed the egg and spoon though), and what’s coming up in the centenary event (hint: who remembers the Shillingstone-to-Stur raft race?!).

👉 Did you know we have our own ladies national champions in North Dorset? All three women are succeeding in traditionally-male contact sports. In the month the glorious Lionesses lifted their European trophy, Rachael spoke to our local winners.

👉 And in yet more female sporting news, Tisbury teenager Lyra Medlock is competing for GB, in the gruelling solo sport of orienteering.

👉 We have reviews of the wonderful Ballet Under The Stars from The Covent Garden Dance Co. at Hatch House, and of this year’s Dorset Opera Festival

👉 The Random 19 guest this month is renowned local chef and restaurateur Mark Hix – as well has his penchant for eBay bargains and Poundland, Mark told us of his journey up to a six-restaurant empire, back down to a single food truck, and now building back again.

👉 And our Dorset Island Discs castaway is Laura Beddow. She may be a Dorset councillor (‘think bins and museums, that’s me’), but she’s also a parrot rescuer, and dreams of an itinerant life playing her viola around a campfire with a cider in her hand

👉 There’s 15 pages of What’s On events for you to explore

👉 This month the reader’s photography submissions were so good, and the pile so big, that we’ve had to change things a little. We’ve added an extra page of them in the magazine, and we’ll also be sharing our shortlist so you can all appreciate the ones we couldn’t get in!

Plus all the usual – local politics, gardening, fascinating local history, the popular ‘take a hike’ (this month it’s just over seven miles around a stunningly quiet, unspoilt area of West Dorset) and nine pages of jobs. Really, why wouldn’t you have a flip through?

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