Pictures of England – Gold Hill in Shaftesbury Covered in Snow

These pictures were sent to me from someone who lives on Gold Hill and also happens to work in the new Gold Hill Books bookshop located at the top of the hill. She snapped these pictures during the last bout of snow. Frankly, they are lovely. I would give my left foot to sled down that hill. Thanks for sharing them.

Shaftesbury News: Hovis Bread and Gold Hill Get a New Spokeswoman – Victoria Pendleton

Since I love Shaftesbury so much, I have news alerts set up to notify me of the latest news. However, Shaftesbury is such a quiet village, I don’t get many alerts!

Got an interesting one yesterday – Hovis Bread, who made Gold Hill in Shaftesbury iconically famous with the classic ‘boy on a bike’ ad, have decided to give it a 21st century makeover.

Here’s a little video all about it:

From the article in the Mail here:

Olympic champions have to earn a crust and even well-bread cyclists like Victoria Pendleton are no different. We all knead cash, after all.

The 29-year-old won sprint gold in Beijing in 2008 as is now hoping to match Sir Chris Hoy’s achievement’s in China by scooping three titles at the London 2012 Games.

She will go for individual and team sprint as well the keirin – and to prove it is not just a half-baked notion, Pendleton has been unveiled as the new face of Hovis bread in the lead up to her home Olympics.

The initial Hovis ads- fetauring a small boy wheeling his bike up narrow, cobbled northern streets – were filmed back in 1973 and have become world famous – even though the ‘northern’ streets were actually in Shaftesbury in Dorset. The brass band playing Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony in the background was real though.

So to bring the product up to date, the company buttered up ‘Queen Victoria,’ offered her the right amount of dough after deciding she was the best thing since, well, sliced bread and gave her a three-year deal to star as their public image

Well, good luck to her in the Olympics. She’s quite a good looking woman – she’ll make a great face for Hovis bread!
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Trip To England 2009 – Recap of All Posts

Editor’s Note – In case you missed any of the posts about our recent trip to England, here’s an aggregated list of all the posts so you can check out what you didn’t have a chance to read. Enjoy!

Trip to England 2009 – Day One – The British Airways Face to Face Events – In case you’re new to the blog I thought I should give a brief explanation as to how we got to go on the trip. Basically we won a contest. British Airways held a contest called the Face of Opportunity – and it’s premise was the businesses are more successful if you conduct meetings and deals face to face instead of via the phone or e-mail. So, they launched a brilliant contest to help small business owners achieve their goals by facilitating those face to face meetings. Click to read more.

Trip to England 2009 – Day Two – London Arrival and More British Airways Face to Face Events – Every time I’ve landed in London, I’ve always had to get off the plane on the tarmac, pile into a bus and drive to the terminal, which was old, dingy and usually involved a lot of walking. It was never a pleasant experiece – especially after being on a plane for 8 hours. Click to read more.

Trip to England 2009 – Day Three – Being a Tourist for a Day in London – Due to the shortness of our trip to England – we were only going to have one full day in London and we wanted to make the most of it. As Dispatches from the North Columnist Lisa Coulson wrote about in the weeks up to our trip, she’d had a tempestuous relationship with London and wanted to get the grand tour from me – someone who had a passion for London despite it’s warts. Click to read more.

Trip to England 2009 – Day Four – Leaving London for Salisbury and Shaftesbury – Even though we’d had an exhausting day touring the sites in London the day before – I still woke up around 5am. I blame jet lag and excitement. We had another busy day planned and I couldn’t wait to get it started! Click to read more.

Trip to England – Day Five – The Heaven That is Shaftesbury, Updown Cottage, Weymouth – On Saturday I awoke in our warm, soft and comfortable bed in Updown Cottage. I woke up as the sun was coming up. I didn’t want to miss a beautiful Dorset sunrise as the Blackmore vale was filled with sunlight. That didn’t quite happen though, as it was raining and quite windy. But I still managed to take far too many pictures than were necessary of that early morning… Click to read more.

Trip to England 2009 – Day 6 – Final Bits of England and the Journey Home – This will be a rather short post and will be the hardest to write. I woke up again ridiculously early to photograph the morning in Shaftesbury. It was raining and blustery. One thing I was really looking forward to was picking up the Sunday papers and having a cup of tea on our last morning in Updown Cottage… Click to read more.

A Video Tour of Updown Cottage – The self catering cottage that we stayed in Shaftesbury, Dorset. Heaven on Earth. Can’t wait to go back.

Random Observations from our Trip to England – A collection of seemingly random thoughts about our trip and England in general.

Pictures from our Trip - Check out this post for all our trip related pictures.

A New Dream Achieved – Everyone I Know Must Read This Post – A special post dedicated to everyone who played a part in making the whole trip possible.

Anglophile Oddities: Town Replaces Christmas Tree With Giant Traffic Cone – Citizens Revolt

This is just one of those stories that could only come out of Britain. A town in Dorset, Poole to be specific, decided to replace their traditional real Christmas tree with a fake one, for health and safety reasons (many Anglophiles will have heard of that phrase).

So, they replaced a beautiful real tree with what was basically a big green traffic cone. Citizens were not amused.

In fact, people were so unhappy that it began to be vandalized and the town finally saw some sense and took the ugly monstrosity down. They plan to replace it with a real tree this time, health and safety be damned.

From the BBC Article:

A Dorset town’s ridiculed fake Christmas tree – which was put up in place of a real fir amid safety fears – has been taken down.

Some residents likened the £14,000 fake tree in Poole to a “huge traffic cone” or “a witch’s hat”.

The 33ft (10m) tall “tree” had been chosen because of fears that a real one could topple over in strong winds.

The Dolphin Shopping Centre has donated a real fir tree which will be erected on Tuesday.

The fake tree was damaged in a suspected vandal attack last week and Dorset Police is studying town centre CCTV footage in connection with the incident.

It was made of turf held together by metal mesh and was chosen by the town centre management board.

I applaud the city for seeing some sense and putting up a REAL Christmas tree.

A Video Tour of Updown Cottage – Self Catering Cottage in Shaftesbury, Dorset

While we stayed in Updown Cottage, I took the chance to use my iPhone to take a video tour of Updown Cottage in Shaftesbury, Dorset, so that you guys could get an idea of just how lovely the place really is.

If you’re looking to get away from it all and stay in your own Self Catering Accommodation in Dorset, then Updown Cottage is a MUST.

The tour is about 7 minutes long, please forgive the wind at the beginning and the Blair Witch style camerawork. Updown Cottage deserves better!

If you’d like to stay in Updown Cottage – then check out their website for details and to check on availability. Happy Travels!

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