Film crews have once again returned to Wells, this time to film the Phillipa Gregory novel, The White Queen.
The whole of the area surrounding the Cathedral is cordoned off and we were lucky enough this morning to see 15 costumed cavalry officers riding horses into Cathedral Green.
The White Queen is set in the War of the Roses, beginning with Elizabeth Woodville of House of Lancaster.
The White House has read the novel and is looking forward to the film
We’ve had an awful lot of wet weather in June and on Tuesday night, although it stayed dry, we had quite strong winds. The storm didn’t last too long and we thought nothing of it. The next morning I was up and away early to attend a meeting in London and was puzzled when Rod called me to ask if I had noticed “the tree”….. Well, I hadn’t, and he was quite mysterious about the whole thing and just left the conversation with a throw-away line to check it out when I got home.
When I arrived home later that evening, I was shocked to see that half of the tree was missing, and although I had walked straight past it on my way to the car, I hadn’t noticed a thing.
The tree surgeon is coming this evening to give his prognosis but it isn’t looking good, and to make things worse, it took out our brand new fig tree when it came crashing down.
How on earth we all slept through it I don’t know!
Well, Glastonbury is over for another year, our guests have left us and all of our suites and holiday lets are ready for our next guests. Not surprisingly Adele, Muse and Coldplay were the most rates acts at the festival.
I’d like to say a big thank you to all of our lovely guests who once more gave us their company and left the place in a superb condition.
And if you want to know who the mystery guest was, well, you’ll just have to visit and read the guest book!
We are already beginning to feel the excitement of Glastonbury 2016 here at The White House Bed and Breakfast. While Dulcote remains as sleepy as ever, we have been hearing on the news and also from our neighours, of the terrible queues trying to get into the site.
Last week we were fully booked with contractors, busy making the site ready for the festival, and they shared that the ground was already a mudbath, so looks like its Wellie boots at the ready for everyone. And guests arriving yesterday reported people playing cricket on the roadsides while they waited for the tractors to tow them onto the Glastonbury site
More of our guests arriving throughout the day. Dynamo is apparently staying just up the road, and we have a mystery guest arriving this evening…..
Lets hope the sun shines and that everyone has a great time.
We had such a good day on Saturday and the weather was kind for the Musicircus.
What an experience! Cathedral Green and the Marketplace were packed and everywhere you looked there was a musical event – from accordion players, to choirs, right through to ukulele, brass and bagpipe bands. Drummers, cheerleaders, and not to forget the bell ringers!
We had the pleasure of entering the Cathedral belfry to watch the bell ringers at the start of the event and while we knew the bells were heavy, it was still surprising to see the ringer of the heaviest bell lifted from his feet during the ringing. Amazing to watch and scary to think that the original plan was for us novices to ring them!
When we put up the mobile belfry, most of the morning was helping to guide young and old, experienced and non-experienced ringers have a go, and these extremely light mobile bells were even more difficult to ring than those in our local church.
It was a real pleasure to be a part of this fantastic event and we are really hopeful it becomes an annual celebration for Wells and the Cathedral School
Here at The White House we are full of anticipation for the Glastonbury Music Festival and our first guests will begin to arrive soon.
The festival is a huge event for the area and almost everyone is involved in one way or another.
But while Glastonbury is a happy and perfectly safe event, and one of the cleaner major music festivals, there are always risks and dangers for those who aren’t sensible in their approach. And so it was pleasing to see a pragmatic approach by our children’s school, who have offered guidance to all of our children, warning them of the possibilities that they may be offered access to drugs or what ‘legal highs’ (although they are now also illegal)
A sobering thought but one worth remembering – enjoy the festival but please stay safe…..
Here at The White House we are looking forward to participating in the Wells Cathedral School Musicircus which will take place on Saturday 18th June.
Over 400 musicians will participate in the event which will be opened by Michael Eavis at 11am.
Focused on and around the Cathedral Green, the event will include bell ringing, mass choirs, brass on the rooftops and piano serenades under the arches.
And at 12:30 the event will close with a mass rendition of the Beatles classic “All you need is love”
Watch out for us on the cathedral green – we will be bell ringing and have also been invited into the Cathedral bell tower for the very first time to see the Cathedral bells in action. Although we are not expert enough to try the Cathedral bells (as you can imagine they are extremely heavy) it is our ambition to progress to these if the event is repeated next year.
This is our second spring here at The White House in Dulcote and this week we have welcomed back our stunning red poppies.
Just take a look at them in all their glory…..
But this also brings me to a very sad farewell, to my lovely joules wellie boots bought as a gift by friends and colleagues when I left London. So well loved, and worn almost every day since our move to Somerset, they have now been relegated to the dustbin in the sky. After a much too enthusiastic try to lift a stone that had fallen into the small drainage stream at the entrance to The White House, a huge rip tore into the side. Farewell good friend……. or is that friends?????
We had an early start to the weekend here at The White House, going out on Thursday night out with friends to eat.
Based on recommendations (lots of them) we had decided to try The Subhouse, a relatively new burger bar with a difference and we weren’t disappointed. Not only was the food excellent, but the staff were extremely helpful and friendly and while we enjoyed a bottle of rose after our meal, the children nipped upstairs to sit on comfortable sofas to play video games.
From the outside, you wouldn’t look twice but its super cool inside and we really do need to go back to try their dirty fries with pulled pork
Take a look at http://www.thesubhouse.co.uk/
and put the 2nd-4th September in your diary ………………..
Here at The White House we have just heard about Valley Fest 2016 and can’t believe this escaped our notice last year.
More about the festival can be found at http://www.valleyfest.co.uk/ but what has really excited us here is thefirst ever mass Zumba IN WELLIES!!!!!!
Can’t wait and just let me know if you want to join us there!