‘A super simple supper that I call a transitional casserole: perfect for early spring. It’s not that heavy I-need-the-warmth-and-carbs type, nor is it ‘oh no it’s too hot for stew’. I made mine with some local Farm Girl Sausages’ Dorset Pork with Wimborne Honey – small batch, locally reared and butchered sausages. I use basil and tomato sauce that makes it perfect for spring.’ – Lizzie
Serves 2 | prep 20 mins | Cooking 80 mins
Ingredients
1 packet sausages
1tbs sunflower oil
750g onion, celery, carrots and swede (use a mix of any veg), roughly chopped to equal bitesize pieces
1 glass red wine
(use stock if preferred)
260g new potatoes
400g tin tomatoes
1 tablespoon pesto
Fresh basil leaves
Method
Fry the sausages in a frying pan with the sunflower oil until browned all over.
Add the mixed vegetables to a roasting pan and pour a glass of wine (or stock) over and season. Cover with foil and cook at 190ºC/gas mark 5 until softened – around 30 minutes.
In a jug, mix the tomatoes (break them up if they’re whole) and pesto.
Add the sausages and uncooked potatoes to the roasting veg, and pour on the tomatoes/pesto mix. Tear the basil over the top. Mix well.
Re-cover with foil, and place back in the oven for around 25 minutes.
Stir the casserole, and put it back in the oven for a further 25 minutes.
When the potatoes are tender the dish is ready to serve: this is great with some crusty bread.
Lizzie Crow is better known to most as Lizzie Baking Bird. From her tiny bakery in West Dorset, Lizzie creates an impressive range of sweet and savoury bakes, which you’ll find at Poundbury and Wimborne Farmers’ Markets, Bridport Market and the county’s food festivals and agricultural shows. A member of the Guild of Food Writers, Lizzie has won numerous Great Taste Awards. Find her on lizziebakingbird.co.uk
Residents of Milborne Port are facing significantly increased travel distances to dispose of household recycling following a decision by Dorset Council to no longer permit Somerset residents to use the Sherborne recycling centre. The change means that many residents who previously relied on the nearby Sherborne facility must now travel considerably further afield if they are to avoid being charged. The nearest alternatives are Yeovil Recycling Centre, requiring a 26-mile round trip, or Castle Cary Recycling Centre, a 28-mile journey.
It is understood that Somerset residents may still be able to use the Sherborne site, but at a cost of £8.50 per visit. This raises serious concerns about practicality and fairness. Residents question who is likely to pay £8.50 to dispose of small or low-value items such as an almost empty rusty tin of paint, electrical appliances larger than those that fit in a plastic bag, or small amounts of unwanted wood, stone or similar materials. This development has raised numerous concerns about environmental impact, accessibility and fairness – particularly for rural residents who already face limited local services. Increased travel distances are likely to result in higher carbon emissions, additional fuel costs and inconvenience for households attempting to responsibly dispose of waste. Efforts to raise these concerns at a parliamentary level have so far gone unanswered. Since August, repeated correspondence has been sent to local MP Sarah Dyke, highlighting the issue and its environmental implications. Despite public statements identifying environmental protection as a priority, no response has been received. Residents argue that the policy contradicts broader sustainability goals by effectively discouraging recycling through reduced accessibility and the introduction of additional costs. There are also concerns that longer travel requirements or usage fees may lead to an increase in fly-tipping or improper waste disposal.
A geographical solution A simple and practical solution has been proposed: adopting a geographic approach whereby households within a defined radius – such as postcodes located within six miles of Sherborne – would be granted free access to the recycling centre, regardless of council boundaries. Such an approach would reflect the realities of local geography, reduce unnecessary travel and support environmental objectives. Local voices are calling for urgent dialogue between Dorset Council, Somerset Council and parliamentary representatives to find a fair and environmentally responsible resolution. Suggestions include reinstating cross-border access agreements, reviewing the proposed charges or implementing a proximity-based access system. Without intervention, the burden will remain on residents who are being asked to travel further, pay more and emit more – simply to recycle their waste responsibly.
The Grumbler – the open opinion column in The BV. It’s a space for anyone to share their thoughts freely. While the editor will need to know the identity of contributors, all pieces will be published anonymously. With just a few basic guidelines to ensure legality, safety and respect, this is an open forum for honest and unfiltered views. Got something you need to get off your chest? Send it to [email protected]. The Grumbler column is here for you: go on, say it. We dare you.
The Dorset Spring Show returns to Puddletown on 9th and 10th May, opening the county’s open-air event season with a programme that leans into spectacle this year, led by headline motocross stunt rider Jamie Squibb.
Squibb’s freestyle team will roar into the Spring Arena, performing high jumps and mid-air tricks – including leaps of more than 30 metres onto a lorry-mounted landing ramp. If that’s not enough, the Bike Battle BMX team will bring a different kind of precision riding, with fast-paced displays running across the weekend. The show balances that high-adrenaline edge with the more traditional countryside demonstrations you might expect from the team behind the Dorset County Show. Away from the main arena, there’s plenty to keep the crowds busy: new for 2026 is the Circus Skills workshop (anyone can take part) and shows, and watch out for the full-sized dinosaur who will be roaming the site! Also new this year are the fire dancing performances, the music stage, wood carving demonstration, hands-on pottery workshops.
Sheepdog displays return – and, as the team point out, with working collies guiding goats into pens in front of a busy crowd, ‘anything can happen’. The Dorset Spring Show offers a full day out for all ages: the Spring Farm offers a chance to meet sheep, pigs, cattle, goats and alpacas, while shire horses take centre stage in the Heavy Horse Village. Now established as an early fixture in Dorset’s events calendar, the show continues to offer a brilliant family day out. The show takes place at Birch Lane Showground, near Puddletown (DT2 7LN), with free parking available. Children go FREE (aged 15 and under), adult tickets £14 until 2nd May. Full details and tickets can be found at dorsetspringshow.co.uk.
After 21 years at the helm of Arthur Conyers’ Gunshop and Fishing Tackle, Justin Frampton is offering this long-established and much-loved Blandford business for sale, alongside the adjoining Conyers Home & Country, launched in 2019.
After 21 years at the helm of Arthur Conyers’ Gunshop and Fishing Tackle, Justin Frampton is offering this long-established and much-loved Blandford business for sale, alongside the adjoining Conyers Home & Country, launched in 2019.
Offered as a complete going concern – lock, stock and barrel – the sale includes a new lease agreement with the landlord, providing a solid foundation for continuity and future growth.
Arthur Conyers, proudly trading since 1886, is the oldest shop in Blandford Forum and a cornerstone of the town’s country community. Renowned for its knowledgeable service and traditional values, the business supplies shotguns, rifles, angling equipment and country clothing to a loyal and longstanding customer base.
The decision to sell comes as Justin turns his focus to Houghton Springs Trout Farm and his other business interests.
Importantly, the business benefits from an experienced and dedicated team. Bryan, who has been with the company for 21 years, remains a highly valued member of staff, supported by Suzie in Conyers Home & Country. Both are keen to stay on and provide continuity for a new owner.
Offered as a complete going concern – lock, stock and barrel – the sale includes a new lease agreement with the landlord, providing a solid foundation for continuity and future growth.
This is a rare opportunity to acquire a heritage retail business with deep roots in the local community and a strong reputation built over generations.
For further information, please contact Justin at [email protected] or visit the shop to discuss in person.
With the welcome arrival of longer days, thoughts turn to sunshine and trips away. While the idea of a summer holiday is something to look forward to, how does this work if you or those you love will need expert care and support factored into their all-inclusive package holiday? Short-term respite breaks in a residential care home can be a great option for combining a change of scene with the reassurance of expert, tailored care. Traditionally though, respite breaks can only be booked a few days or weeks in advance, to account for any changes to individual care needs in the interim. With bookings only able to be made at the last minute, attempting to plan time away – especially if this is to coincide with pre-booked holidays for family carers – can be challenging and frustrating.
Yes, you can Thankfully, there is an alternative. Somerset Care’s book-ahead respite care solution allows you to pre-book your break months in advance, with just a small deposit to reserve your room and support package at your chosen care home. This means that you are free to choose and book your respite break with confidence: booking in advance to align with family member plans, and making sure everyone has a break to look forward to. As your choice of care home isn’t restricted to last-minute availability, you will also have the maximum range of suitable options available to you, from across Somerset Care’s 22 care homes in Somerset and Devon. Your break is reserved for you at a time of your choosing, with a care assessment carried out to confirm that your chosen care home can provide the support you need. We will reaffirm your requirements nearer to your booked break, to ensure everything is in place for you to stay safe and enjoy your time away. Even if your care needs increase, you can relax in the knowledge that, with expert care teams able to provide everything from light help with washing, dressing and daily tasks, right through to hospital-standard, round-the-clock nursing care, Somerset Care is well-positioned to meet you or your loved ones’ changing needs, and support you with the short-term respite care you need.
A book-ahead respite break enables you to plan ahead and look forward to your time away, safe in the knowledge that your break will include expert care tailored to your needs at the time of your stay. For some people, short-term respite breaks provide a well-deserved break for themselves and their carers: for others, it provides an opportunity to experience care home life before making longer-term decisions. Whenever you choose to stay, and whether you stay for a week or longer, you and your loved ones can now plan ahead with confidence. Somerset Care’s day care and respite services support you to live independently at home, for as long as possible. For information and advice, please visit somersetcare.co.uk/respite, or contact our expert enquiries team on 0800 817 4925.
A West Dorset ceramicist has established a new studio business near Charmouth, combining product sales with workshops as part of a deliberately diversified start-up model.
Amelia Christoffers
Amelia Christoffers launched Clay and Salt Ceramics in May 2025, initially running the venture alongside part-time retail work before moving to full-time within three months. The studio now generates income through a mix of ceramic sales, private tuition and group courses, with teaching built into the core offer to create a more consistent revenue stream and local customer base. Drawing on a background as a freelance florist in London, she produces ceramics designed for ikebana-style arrangements, focusing on minimal, low-waste floral display. ‘You don’t need huge displays,’ she says. ‘A single bloom can have the same impact.’ The studio was supported by a £3,000 Start Up Loan, funding essential equipment including a potter’s wheel, materials and fit-out, allowing the business to launch fully equipped rather than scaling gradually. Workshops attract individuals, families and groups, with the social element proving a key draw. ‘People enjoy learning together,’ she says. Now operating full-time, Clay and Salt Ceramics reflects a growing trend in rural Dorset towards small creative businesses combining making with experience-led services.
Victoria Sturgess has a clutch of comic classics to remind us that misfortune, misunderstanding and absurdity make great entertainment
Let us use the coming of spring (finally) to cheer ourselves up with some much-needed laughter. It’s not well known that Clockwise, the hilarious film starring John Cleese, was initially planned as a book but instead became Michael Frayn’s first film script.
Brian Stimpson is awarded the honour of being the first comprehensive school headmaster to chair the Annual Conference, and his immaculately ordered world swiftly unravels in a series of unfortunate circumstances. They are set in motion by him boarding the wrong train and proceed to delay him en route, resulting in a genuinely hilarious experience … for us, at least. Another ‘ordinary guy’, Gary, in Bob Mortimer’s The Satsuma Complex, finds himself in a not dissimilar ‘not of his own making’ situation which spirals out of control. As you would expect from the unrivalled storyteller of Would I Lie to You and Gone Fishing, the story unfolds wonderfully, with an entertaining cast of quirky characters: from Gary’s older, cranky neighbour and her chilled sheepdog to the gym-obsessed cafe owner Wayne and his dad. The conversations encapsulate Mortimer’s random sense of humour. Perhaps one of the first gentle comic classics is Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. This 1899 tale, describing a two-week boating holiday on the Thames, was originally intended as a guidebook. Jerome’s digressions into humorous anecdotes soon became the main narrative. There are also classic comedy set pieces such as a Plaster of Paris trout and the ‘Irish stew‘ made by mixing leftovers from their hamper – and not forgetting Montmorency the dog, who supplied a water rat. Catch 22 could never, ever be described as a gentle comic classic – though classic it most certainly is, often cited as one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. It is a savage, satirical book by Joseph Heller examining the absurdity of war and military life through the experiences of Yossarian, one of the most memorable and compelling characters in any genre of literature. He and his cohort desperately try to maintain their sanity in a nightmare world. And Catch 22? If one pleads insanity to stop flying missions with a high mortality rate, one is, in fact sane. However, one must be insane to keep flying those exact missions … Read this incredible giant of a book to see how this illogical logic underlies the whole, sorry – but also often incredibly funny – tale. It’s timeless, as current global absurdities prove. Sorry – I did promise to cheer us up. Only one author for that: P.G. Wodehouse. While Jeeves and Wooster are the (rightly) acclaimed leading players, I read the Blanding Castle series of ten books again and again. Empress of Blandings is an enormous Berkshire sow, and the subject of many plots and schemes, generally involving her kidnap for various purposes – all nefarious – one of which results in her suffering a hangover. Pure cheering-up guaranteed.
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The following photographs are a selection from a collection of 47 images preserved and shared by the Dorset History Centre. They offer a rare, detailed glimpse of everyday post-war life in Sydling St Nicholas in 1947. These official photographs were issued by the Central Office of Information in London, and each is annotated, though sadly no photographer is credited. They capture not just the village itself, but the people, routines and small moments that defined it.
The Village shop
Mrs G L Spriggs runs the local village shop, which is still called Sherry’s Stores after her father. Most of Sydling’s 350 people are registered with Mrs Spriggs for their rations. They can purchase almost everything (with the exception of bread) at the shop. Mrs Spriggs does all her own buying, dealing with as many as 60 different firms, and has over £500 capital tied up in stock. Rationing has added to her task enormously, and dealing with coupons, points and personal points takes up a great deal of her time. Knowing what to stock, and just how much of each item she requires, is a business that would take a lifetime to learn. But as Mrs. Spriggs, being born in the business, says ‘it is an art that must grow on you.’
The Village Petrol pump
Mrs Spriggs also owns the local petrol pump. A constant stream of cars and commercial vehicles keeps her running in and out of the shop, creating an additional burden in her very busy day. The tank which holds 600 gallons is beneath the small garden behind Mrs Spriggs’.
The village Produce Association
The village Produce Association, formed to encourage home-growing of produce, has 60 members in Sydling. Each pays 1/3d a year subscription, and for this they get seeds 2/6d in the pound cheaper, and seed potatoes 3s 9d in the pound cheaper. Lime is supplied to members at 2/- instead of 5/- a cwt under a Government subsidy. Annually the Dorset Village Produce Association holds a competition, and here (from left to right) is Mrs Bowditch, Miss Ridout, Mrs Palmer, Mr Hallett, Mr Kellaway, Mrs Bowring, Mrs Hallett, Mr Bowring and Mr Bowditch, packing up the produce for the competition which was held in Weymouth.
The Village Fete is the baby show
One of the most popular afternoon attractions at the Village Fete is the baby show. Here Nurse Nightingale, the District Nurse, is weighing six-month old, fair-haired, blue-eyed Barry Wilkinson, while attractive Mrs Wilkinson, herself a Sydling girl, holds her baby son.
Health visitors tour the villages to give advice to expectant mothers
The relationship of the village with the County Town is constant in all matters of health, roads, public utilities and education. From the County Medical Officer of Health’s department, health visitors tour the villages to give advice to expectant mothers and to mothers of young children. Here Nurse Keohane (pronounced Q-harn) calls on Mrs E M Swain of Up Sydling to see her eight-month-old son Terence is gaining weight satisfactorily. Mrs Swain has a cousin, Mrs Thelma Peterson, living in Winnipeg, and an aunt, Mrs H Teal, who lives in Victoria, BC.
Taking a sample of well water to test for purity
Sydling St Nicholas is dependent for most of its public services on Dorchester, County Town of Dorset. Here, Mr B R Swift, Assistant Sanitary Inspector of the Dorchester Rural District Council, is taking a sample of well water to test for purity. The Dorchester Rural District Council is responsible for 128,000 acres (roughly 20 miles square) of rural areas with a population of 16,000 for housing, water, drainage, inspection of milk producing premises, refuse collection, obstructions of right-of-ways and footpaths.
Drinking water is supplied through pipes running along the village street
Water is Sydling’s greatest domestic problem. There is no water grid-system, and very few of the cottages and farmhouses have their own well. Drinking water is supplied through pipes running along the village street, tapped at intervels from where the inhabitants can draw their supplies, as Mrs Turner and Joyce Grabb are đoing here.
The village school at Sydling St.Nicholas
The village school at Sydling St.Nicholas has 34 children. the headmistress is Mrs I S Bowring, who is also clerk to the Parish Council, Chairman of the Village Produce Association and a member of the WEA Classes. Much of the village life revolves around the headmistress, who is in close contact with the population from early childhood onwards. Here the junior class is in the background, and the senior class in the foreground. The latter will soon be moving on to either the Dorchester County School (for girls), Grammar School (for boys) or the Modern School (mixed).
A stroll through the main street
At dusk the village takes on a sleepy appearance, which belies the hard work that goes on from early morning to late at night. Mrs Davies (sister of the headmistress, Mrs Bowring) with her friend Miss Holland, on holiday from Scarborough, stroll through the main street while little Mary Lovell pauses in her play to watch them as they pass.
Mr Sherry winds the old Elizabethan clock of the parish church of St Nicholas
Every day Mr Sherry mounts the steps of the parish church of St Nicholas tower to wind the old Elizabethan clock. For this he is paid 1 1/2d [a penny ha’penny] The clock was installed in 1593. It has no clock dial, as was the custom of the period, being designed solely to chime the hours.
One simple flaw underlies the many government failures that have afflicted us for decades. Too many spending decisions are based on short-term cost considerations, with too little regard given to long-term benefits. Expenditure is seen as a drain on public finances, rather than an investment that more than pays for itself over time.
Ken Huggins North Dorset Green Party
A particularly serious example has been exposed in the recent report into the impact of the Covid pandemic. It highlighted just how close the NHS came to collapse – and key to avoiding that collapse were the heroic actions of NHS workers. They battled with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), supplies and beds, as wave after wave of infection struck. Many suffered understandable mental health issues, and some even died as a result of the conditions forced upon them. And yet, four years before the outbreak, a simulation exercise was carried out to test the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic. It highlighted a shortage of PPE for NHS workers, but the then Tory government decided against purchasing more – a short-term cost decision that subsequently caused much unnecessary suffering and loss of life, as well as damaging our economy.
If only … Short-term thinking also lies behind the economic damage being caused by the present Middle East war. Had successive governments not steadily backtracked on environmental policies and delayed our transition to renewable energy, we would not now be so badly affected by rocketing gas and oil prices. In Dorset, the Navitus Bay wind farm that was blocked by Conservative councillors in Bournemouth would now have been powering much of our county. Imagine how much less the Iran war would now be costing us if we had invested in upgrading existing properties, built new ones cheaper to live in with high levels of insulation, PV panels and electric heating, and accelerated the transition to electric vehicles. Perhaps those politicians who are fond of describing climate action as ‘net zero stupid’ will now reflect on the real stupidity – dancing to the tune of fossil fuel interests instead of seizing the benefits of addressing climate change. Ken Huggins North Dorset Green Party
