The voting on the above entries is now closed.
Due to a technical hiccup we were not able to post these images before. Over the next few days we will post the entries for June as well as the winning images for April and May.
On 25 May, a bank holiday Monday, we asked you to go out on Exmoor and take photos. Many people responded and sent us the images they took on the day. A big thank you to everyone who got involved!
On Bank Holiday Monday, 25 May 2015, we want you to record what you are doing on Exmoor that day.
Whether you are out walking the dog, go rock climbing, put your toe into the sea, have a cream tea or just dig over the garden – take a photo (or more) and send them to us. As we are quite a nosey lot, we are also keen on hearing from you. This can be a short paragraph – a bit like a “Dear Diary” entry – or a longer account*. You an also send us a video or do a voice recording.
We will collate all the entries and send them on to the country archives.
All photos and stories will be published here on the Exmoor4all blog. We are also hoping to publish a photobook. All fingers crossed, there’ll be a public screening of the photos during the summer. Just watch this space!
You images and stories on Facebook www.facebook.com/Exmoor4all, send them via Twitter @Exmoor4all or email them to exmoor4all@gmail.com
We’re looking forward to lots and lots of photos and stories!
PS: This is NOT a competition, just a bit of fun – and a way to show the world how fab it is to spend a day on Exmoor!
Birdie Johnson – Wednesday May 13 – 7.30pm – St Luke’s
Alas Poor Johnny –
Buster Johnson’s memoir of life on an Exmoor farm, edited by Birdie Johnson with a foreword by grandson Boris
Birdie Johnson, Buster Johnson’s daughter, talks about Alas Poor Johnny, her mother’s highly entertaining memoir of life on an Exmoor farm in the 1950s, and how, after all these years, it has finally come to be published.
In 1951 Buster moved with her husband Johnny and their four children to West Nethercote, a remote farm four miles from Winsford. Cut off from the world she used to know, of domestic servants and bridge parties, she threw herself into her new life. Her world shrank, revolving around Johnny and the children, an assortment of friends and neighbours, and, above all, around the animals. Isolated as she was, Buster kept in touch by writing letters, sharing with friends and family the seemingly daily dramas of life at Nethercote; it is these letters she drew on, some ten years later, when writing Alas Poor Johnny.
Refreshments available in the interval and an optional snack, costing £4, may be booked in advance for the interval by telephoning Marian Lloyd on 01643 831451.
Admission: £10 to reserve the seat of your choice; £5 for unreserved seating; 14 year-olds and under free.
Birdie Johnson, editor of Alas Poor Johnny, is the youngest of Buster and Johnny’s four children. Brought up at Nethercote, she spent a large part of her life there, moving back twice as an adult and continuing to live there after Buster and Johnny had died. In 2002 she produced the Exmoor Oral History Archive (www1.somerset.gov.uk/archives/exmoor) and, with photographer Mark Rattenbury, co-authored Reflections: Life Portraits of Exmoor, the book of the archive. In 2009, with some reluctance (looking to the future), she made the final move away from the isolation of the Nethercote valley to the High Weald of East Sussex, where the landscape serves as a replacement for the Exmoor she has left behind.
For more information about Alas Poor Johnny go to http://www.troubador.co.uk/shop.
ALAS POOR JOHNNY
Buster Johnson’s vivid and entertaining account of life on an Exmoor farm in the 1950s, edited by Birdie Johnson and with a foreword by Boris Johnson, her grandson
“It is wonderful to hear her voice again”
Boris Johnson
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In 1951 Buster Johnson moved from Surrey to Exmoor with her husband Johnny, four children, a couple of dogs and a vanload of pigs and poultry. Naturally gregarious, she exchanges a life of domestic servants and bridge parties for a remote and spartan existence at West Nethercote, a farm in the heart of Exmoor national park. Alas Poor Johnny, written some ten years later, is her vivid and fascinating account of their life there, and of farming on Exmoor in the fifties, told with a strong sense of drama and of the absurd. The void left by her lost cultural and social pursuits becomes filled by the minutiae of everyday life, and by her husband Johnny and their four children. Above all, it is filled by the animals. These take the place of absent friends in her affections, their personalities permeating the book. There is a small but strong supporting cast, including busybody Mrs Stevens at the next door farm; Arthur the ex-cowman who moves with them from Surrey; SRN Tommie, the butt of an aggressive ram – and Alby the rabbit catcher, who plays the mouth organ and dances wild dances, enchanting the children. Finally, threading through all this with a glint of steel, is Johnny. He is her antithesis; strong and undemonstrative, generally preferring animals to people. Their relationship is the heart of the book. Alas Poor Johnny is a first-hand account of life on a farm in the 1950s, written at the time but reading with the freshness of the present. It will appeal to anyone, whether interested in Exmoor and old farming practices, a lover of the countryside and of animals, or just wanting to cheer themselves up with a good story, well told. It is a delight to read, hugely funny and, at times, touching. Buster and Johnny spent the rest of their lives at Nethercote. She died in 1987, without ever publishing her book. Her daughter Birdie, who herself lived there for many years, has now done so on her behalf. Boris Johnson, Buster’s grandson, has written a foreword. |
Boris Johnson announces his ‘Grannyfesto’ to a packed and appreciative audience of friends and family at the launch of Alas Poor Johnny, a memoir of life on an Exmoor farm written by his grandmother Buster (Granny Butter), Dulverton Town Hall, Easter Monday, 6 April 2015
“It is fair to say that no one in our family has much of a reputation for meeting copy deadlines – and indeed one of the reasons my brother Jo has had to zoom back to London this morning is that someone rang him before breakfast and reminded him that they needed 4000 words by 7pm for the Tory election manifesto – don’t worry – it’s going to be superb.
But Granny Butter has today beaten all comers by producing her book not just late but fully 28 years after her death – to call her the late Granny Butter is an understatement, my friends – and it is a triumph.
Her memoirs have been brilliantly edited by Birdie and every page of them evokes a world that has almost vanished – Exmoor in the 1950s. A world without television and the internet, a world without central heating and mains electricity. Where life is an elemental struggle to start the fire and light the tilley lamps and pull the cows from the bog and save the sheep from an appalling disease called blackleg, to which they invariably succumb.
And yet I am sure that Jo would agree with me that there is so much we can learn from this book. And in this tense pre-electoral period I believe it is time to cull the 10 key points and put them to the people.
Yes; here it is – the Grannyfesto.
1. Abolish VAT on hearing aids.
2. Apply to the UN for immediate recognition of the superior intelligence of rats, geese and other animals.
3. Create a fourth emergency service, staffed by volunteers, to perform that humanitarian function essential to any civilised society of pulling your husband, and his landrover, from the river when he has had one too many at the Royal Oak.
4. Institute forthwith an NHS for animals, funded out of general taxation, to help cope with the appalling and vaguely obscene consequences of terrier tail baldness.
5. Admit asylum seekers from Italy and other Eurozone disaster areas on the strict understanding they speak English and help with the lambing.
6. Bring back hunting to Exmoor. While always respecting the feelings, and indeed the wishes, of all animals involved.
7. Relax planning bureaucracy so that hard pressed hill farmers can build attractive tractor sheds for machines that ceased to function at least 20 years ago.
8. Negotiate an immediate opt out from all burdensome and intrusive EU legislation on vacuum cleaners and other electric appliances, because sometimes the wood is so wet that the only way to get the fire going is the old Electrolux on reverse thrust, and put it to the people in the form of an in-out referendum.
9. Make scrabble an Olympic sport, provided that joey with a small j is globally recognised as a valid term for a baby kangaroo.
10. Finally, above all, bring back MANNERS, in young people. So that they stand up when all grown-ups, particularly ladies, enter the room. And so that they eat crisps in the proper way, with a knife and fork, as Granny Butter was taught to do when she was brought up in the Pavillon du Barry, Versailles.
That is the Grannyfesto my friends, these are the ten key policies that I think will carry this country, or indeed any country, on May the 7th. If you seek any further elucidation it is all here in this wonderful book, for which we thank Granny Butter, as indeed we thank her for so much else. So well done Birdie on a brilliant job – and forwards to victory with Granny Butter.”
Alas Poor Johnny by Buster Johnson
Edited by Birdie Johnson, with a foreword by Boris Johnson
paperback £7.99 and ebook £3.99. For more information go to www.troubador.co.uk/shop
From crabbing to kayaking and walking to photography, the Exmoor Coast Festival celebrates all the wonderful things to do along our stunning coastline. The event is coordinated by Bryan Cath for Exmoor Tourism and there is something for everyone to enjoy, mostly free, from Ilfracombe in the west to Watchet in the east.
For those who have lots of energy there are some challenging activities to try their hand at with qualified trainers. Probably the most daring is coasteering at Hele Bay near Ilfracombe on Tuesday 26 May – this is rock climbing, but sideways with the sea always close by. For those who want to try out vertical rock climbing then the Valley of Rocks on Thursday 28 May is the place to go. There are two opportunities to try out kayaking, at Lee Bay near Lynton on Wednesday 27 May and Combe Martin on Thursday 28 May. For the bikers there’s a guided mountain bike ride around Horner near Porlock on Monday 25 May. And there’s an opportunity to try coarse fishing at Slade Reservoir on Wednesday 27 May with a South West Lakes ranger.
There are a variety of walks, one around Lee Abbey near Lynton on Saturday 23 May, takes in the grounds of the abbey, which are not normally open to the public. On Thursday 28 May there is a coastal walk around Porlock and at Combe Martin a walk find out about the trades and settlements heritage walk. For those who want to stretch their legs there’s a challenging walk along the rugged coast path on Selworthy Beacon with the Exmoor Society on Saturday 30 May.
Bryan Cath says: “The range of events on offer is astonishing and we do hope that people will come along and join in as many as possible.”
For those with smaller children there are several events taking place which will be perfect. On Saturday 23 May Combe Martin celebrates Hunting the Earl of Rone where children can join in the Junior Party Day and on Monday see the main parade through the length of the village. On Sunday 24 May there is a charity duck race at Porlock. On Monday 25 May there is a beach safari at Lynmouth with a National Park Ranger and a sandcastle competition at Combe Martin beach. On Thursday 28 May join in a free day with the National Park on their Big Adventure Day at Lynmouth. On Friday 29 May you can join the Devon Wildlife Trust in a Shoresearch looking for pond-life at Lynmouth. On Saturday 30 May why not join in the Exmoor World Championship Crabbing Competition at Porlock Weir. At Combe Martin Museum you can join in a fun afternoon at the Children’s Activity Workshop.
Running throughout the Coast Festival is an art exhibition at Contains Art at Watchet. This displays artists’ impressions of the geology of the impressive rock formations in that area, our own Jurassic coast. There will also be a barbecue with music and activities on Saturday 30 May at Watchet. Somerset Wildlife Trust are putting on an exhibition of coast art and marine wildlife at Porlock on Wednesday 27 May.
The National Park’s Lynmouth Pavilion is putting on various events throughout the Coast Festival. On Saturday 23 you can enjoy songs, stories and pictures celebrating the history of Exmoor. On Monday 25 May come and see the film about the amazing feat of endurance when the Louisa Lifeboat was hauled from Lynmouth to Porlock Weir to save a stricken ship. On Wednesday 27 May meet the Coastguards and discover the challenges they face on our dangerous coast. On Thursday 28 May in the evening come and enjoy some stunning photography taken around the National Park by Dr Nigel Stone from Exmoor National Park.
There are some more relaxing events taking place. On Monday 25 May in the afternoon enjoy the open gardens at Woolhanger near Parracombe with craft stalls and cream teas. We all love our cream teas and there are more at the Sail Loft at Combe Martin Museum on Tuesday 26 May in the morning. On Thursday 28 May at The Ship in Porlock Weir come and join in some sea shanties in the evening. On Friday 29 May go along to the Regal Theatre in Minehead for an enchanting puppet show about the Musicians of Bremen. On Saturday 30 May visit the Knitting Workshop in Combe Martin to brush up on your skills. Closing the festival on Sunday 31 May is an afternoon of music, readings and more cream teas at St Mary’s Church at Lynton.
The Coast Festival is supported by Exmoor Tourism, Exmoor National Park Partnership Fund and South West Water, for more details of the Coast Festival visit www.visit-exmoor.co.uk/coast-fest
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More information
To find out full details of each event please visit http://www.visit-exmoor.co.uk/coast-fest or the full listings at http://www.visit-exmoor.co.uk/types/coast-festival/map
A5 double-sided leaflets will be distributed throughout the area promoting the event.
The festival is co-ordinated by Bryan Cath for Exmoor Tourism. Contact Bryan at bryan@westcountrywalks.co.uk or 01271 883131.
Here are the winners of the Exmoor4all photo competition in March, chosen by our fans on Facebook. First prize went to Liz Mitchell for her gorgeous Exmoor foal – she receives an Exmoor Club Card as well as a canvas donated by Churchgate Gallery Porlock. The canvas will be on display in the Minehead gallery for one month.
Photo by Liz Mitchell.
First place in the March competition.
Simonsbath Festival 2015 starts on Bank Holiday Monday May 4 at 2.30pm with traditional May Day celebrations for all the family on Exford Village Green. There will be magical tales about the Exmoor Forest from popular local storyteller Frances Harrison, followed by maypole dancing to live music from Howard Harrison on guitar and Ben van Weede on fiddle. Tea and refreshments will be available.
In the next six weeks the tiny village of Simonsbath, and its magical moorland setting, will be buzzing with an exciting mix of events, from classical, jazz, opera and world music concerts to poetry readings, talks, walks, workshops and much more.
The festival’s opening concert brings the warm Mediterranean sounds of Greek music to Simonsbath with a performance by the outstanding George Kypreos Band at St Luke’s Church on Saturday May 9 at 7.30pm.
And on Wednesday May 13 at 7.30pm Birdie Johnson comes to St Luke’s to talk about the book she has just edited by her mother Buster Johnson (with foreword by grandson Boris). Birdie’s talk will include highlights from Alas Poor Johnny, her mother’s colourful and entertaining memoir of life on an Exmoor farm in the 1950s, and she will explain how, after all these years, it has finally come to be published.
Throughout the festival period Boevey’s Tea Rooms will host an exhibition of art by local artists featuring mainly Exmoor themed work including paintings in oil, watercolour and pastel as well as printmaking and photography.
Simonsbath Festival runs from May 4 to June 19. For information or to request a full-colour printed festival programme phone Victoria Thomas on 01643 8313434, email simonsbathfestival@mail.com or visit the website www.simonsbathfestival.co.uk. To book tickets phone Marian Lloyd on 01643 831451.
And here is an overview of events:
Performers and Speakers
Birdie Johnson Wednesday May 13 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
Birdie Johnson, Buster Johnson’s daughter, talks about Alas Poor Johnny, her mother’s highly entertaining memoir of life on an Exmoor farm in the 1950s, and how, after all these years, it has finally come to be published. Read more….
Geoff Nichols Good Vibes Friday May 22 – 8.30pm, Exmoor Forest Inn
Geoff Nichols returns to the Exmoor Forest Inn with his Swing jazz band Good Vibes. Having led the legendary Avon Cities jazz band for many years, trumpet and vibes star Geoff Nichols turns to the Swing music of the 1930s and 40s to present his Good Vibes band for the discerning jazz fan. Read more…..
The George Kypreos Band Saturday May 9 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
Simonsbath Festival opens with the sunlight and warmth of the Mediterranean evoked by the sound of Greek music from the George Kypreos Band. The band is led by the virtuoso bouzouki and distinctively soulful voice of George Kypreos, accompanied by Greek female vocals, and driven by the strong rhythmic grooves of gypsy guitar, Syrian darbouka and a rocking English back-line. Read more….
Kausary Saturday May 30 – 4:00pm and 7.30pm, St Luke’s
The Peruvian band Kausary’s workshop at 4pm will take participants on a journey through Andean culture to experience the vitality of the music and dance of Latin America. The emphasis is is on hands-on experience, with the opportunity to play some of the instruments, including panpipes, guitar and charango, so that participants can discover their own Andean spirit!
Then at 7.30pm the six-piece band plays a rich repertoire of traditional Andean and contemporary Latin sounds, playing with unequalled depth of emotion in styles typical of the Andean highlands, coastal lowlands, Amazon basin and forest, and Cuba. Read more….
Le Jazz Saturday June 6 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
The highly entertaining and dazzlingly dexterous musicians who form Le Jazz show their mastery and enjoyment in a variety of musical styles, performing a richly diverse programme of music from Faure to Django Reinhart, with Gershwin and Jewish Klezma music along the way. Read more….
Michael Bochmann and David Watkins Saturday May 23 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
Sacred and Profane – music for violin and harp.
World class violinist Michael Bochmann and harpist David Watkins perform an irresistible programme of music from the sublime to the more down to earth, including works by Bach, Vivaldi, Saint-Saens, Paganini, Mozart and Massenet, and much-loved traditional pieces to herald the arrival of summer. Read more….
Njabulo Madlala Saturday May 16 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
South African baritone and 2010 Kathleen Ferrier Award-winning Njabulo Madlala brings a voice of rare distinction and beauty to the Simonsbath Festival and demonstrates the quality and range of his musicianship in a dazzlingly diverse programme featuring Schubert lieder, African-American spirituals, French art songs, English ballads and traditional South African folk songs. Read more….
Pop-Up Opera Saturday June 13 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
The Italian Girl in Algiers
Playboy Mustafa is bored with his wife Elvira; what he really wants is an Italian girl. Coincidentally, an Italian girl Isabella arrives, in search of her sweetheart Lindoro, a young Italian man recently captured on the high seas by Mustafa’s pirates and now in his service. Read more….
Rob Wilson-North Wednesday June 3 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
Rob Wilson-North, Conservation Manager for the Exmoor National Park, explains how current research is revealing more about the enterprising Georgian industrialist John Knight’s vision for Exmoor and his plans for a great mansion at the heart of his estate in Simonsbath with pleasure grounds after the picturesque style. Read more….
Dr Sue Baker Wednesday May 27 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
Author of ‘Survival of the Fittest – a Natural History of the Exmoor Pony’ and past chair of the Exmoor Pony Society, Dr Sue Baker assesses the future of the Exmoor Pony. Read more….
Tom and Barbara Brown Wednesday June 10 – 7.30pm, Exmoor Forest Inn
Moor Songs
The Exmoor Forest Inn hosts an open session of Exmoor music and song led by popular folk and traditional entertainers Tom and Barbara Brown. Singers, musicians and audience are all welcome. Read more…..
Tracey Elliot-Reep Wednesday May 20 – 7.30pm, St Luke’s
Adventures on horseback
Tracey gives an inspirational and entertaining presentation about her amazing horse riding adventures in distant lands, illustrated with stunning photography and film. Read more….
Each month we ask our fans to post three photos in our Facebook group. At the end of the months, all photos are uploaded to an album on our Facebook page where everybody can like their favourite images. The ten images with the most likes at the end of the month go through to the final, with a chance of featuring on our Exmoor4all 2016 calendar.
Exmoor 4 all 