beautiful clevedon

Back Once Again

2010-04-09T11:43:00.004+01:00

Blimey, it has been a while since I posted, but I am still alive and the sun is shining and Clevedon is indeed still beautiful.

I have removed a load of spam comments from dodgy Japanese websites, none of which were particularly constructive or indeed linked in any way to Clevedon.

Related to Clevedon though, we had a friend come over from Australia last weekend, who is doing a tour all around England visiting all of her old acquaintances. She is mad keen on hashing (an international group of non-competitive running, social and drinking clubs - for the uninitiated) and was due to go off hashing in Wells the next day and so took our big scrobbly Labrador out for a practice run down on Marshall's field and along the sea path. Anyway the point of the story is that she came back amazed as everyone she met had said "Good morning" to her. Of course they did, Clevedon is a friendly, beautiful place, but sometimes I forget that the rest of the world is not like that.

It reminds me of when we first moved down to Clevedon - the week before someone had been stabbed in our local and the paper reported it on page 4 in a small paragraph - when we got to Clevedon the front page news in the Mercury was drugs come to Clevedon - a couple of teenagers had been caught having a spliff in the car park of the Bristol. Yes!! we thought, if that is the nastiest that happens here then we have found or own spot of heaven and more or less that does tend to be the nastiest that happens here and as for the nice, there is a lot of it - just go down to the sea front on a sunny day, watch everyone on the promenade and have a ride on the train. Clevedon you are a marvellous place to be and I have been remiss in not espousing your beauty more regularly. Ladies, gentlemen please raise your glasses in a toast - To Clevedon!

Clevedon Pier

2006-09-15T08:53:00.000+01:00

The nice people at the Pier dropped this site an e-mail to say:

"This weekend we will have the sailing ship 'Matthew' visiting us. She hopes to dock at the end of the pier Saturday around 12noon and again on Sunday.

Come and get the best view in town of the Fireworks on Marine Lake Saturday evening. Half price for Adults. Just 50p per person. All proceeds to the pier maintanence fund.

Can we make the Guiness Book of Records?
Come to our tombola Sunday 17th September 2pm-5pm.
Some wonderful prizes to be won. "

So why not pop along and give them your support?
If you are wondering what the Matthew is by the way, it’s a replica of John Cabot’s sailing ship. As Wikipedia puts it:

“The Matthew was a ship sailed by John Cabot in 1497 from Bristol to North America, presumably Newfoundland. After a voyage which had got no further than Iceland, Cabot left again with only one vessel, the Matthew, a small ship (50 tons), but fast and able. The crew consisted of only 18 people. The Matthew departed either 2 May or 20 May 1497. She sailed to Dursey Head, Ireland, from where she sailed due west, expecting to reach Asia. However, landfall was reached in North America on 24 June 1497. His precise landing-place is a matter of much controversy, with Bonavista or St. John's in Newfoundland the most likely sites.
Cabot went ashore to take possession of the land, and explored the coast for some time, probably departing on 20 July. On the homeward voyage his sailors thought they were going too far north, so Cabot sailed a more southerly course, reaching Brittany instead of England. On 6 August he arrived back in Bristol.”

Clevedon, NZ

2006-09-14T09:03:00.000+01:00

Following on from the post re Clevedon, New Zealand (named by a resident of our town settling in New Zealand - and, apparently, much to the annoyance of the locals who were mostly of Scottish descent), I have been getting some e-mails expressing interest in the story. I’ve got to admit it is also of personal interest, so I e-mailed the Clevedon, NZ information centre who were kind enough to e-mail back to say that they would confer with an “elder” and get back to use with any useful info. So when anything comes in, I’ll post it.
It’ll be interesting to see if the chap who named Clevedon, NZ still has relatives in our Clevedon….

Clevedon Seafront Festival

2006-09-12T15:13:00.000+01:00

Don't forget (I'm sure you haven't - there are signs all over town!) that this weekend is the Clevedon Seafront Festival (see the events calendar for details).
The bbc website says the weather is going to be fine, so I'll be down there - hope you will be too!

Business Directory

2006-08-23T14:52:00.000+01:00

As promised I have now completed a local business directory - see links to the right - it is the top one.
At the moment it is populated by about 400 businesses based in Clevedon - so please do use it to find a local business and help boost the Clevedon economy.
If you are a business owner or manager in Clevedon, please have a look in the Directory. If I have got any of your details wrong or if you don't want to be listed (or you do want to be but are not!) then please let me know and I will change it.
In terms of being listed in the directory, just having your basic details there won't cost you anything.
If you want features that cost time to implement and webspace to host then there may be a charge - again please contact me to discuss this. Given the spirit of this website any charges will be biased against big national and multinational business and for local family run ones. Sorry - just the way it is!

Happening Clevedon

2006-08-23T11:29:00.000+01:00

Theres lots going on in Clevedon at the moment, so whether you are a local or a visitor, why not check out the events calendar to see what you could be doing in Clevedon?
Recently added are details for:

Clevedon Farmers Market
Summer Family Fun Days
Clevedon Art Club 50th open Art Exhibition
Clevedon Flower Show & Festival
Open Air Theatre ‘Hamlet’
Clevedon Seafront Festival

As I say, I've added the details to the Calendar, but if you want any more information about any of the events then contact the Clevedon Visitor Information Centre on Tel 01275 873 498, or e-mail Clevedon.library@n-somerset.gov.uk.

And.. as ever if you have a comment on an event or one you want listed then just drop me a line

More photos for the gallery

2006-08-23T11:22:00.000+01:00

Nathan e-mailed me to say

"Hi,

I was in Clevedon a few weeks ago visiting family and took a few snaps while I was there. Copies are attached to this email, and I'd be very grateful if you could put my name on there with any of the photos if they're used.

Thanks,
Nathan"

I've got to say thanks to Nathan - as you can see, he has a really good eye for a nice photo. In fact I'd recommend that you have a look in the gallery and see what you think. Very talented!

Good food in Clevedon

2006-08-23T10:30:00.000+01:00

Mr Austin just dropped me a line to say:
"First time visit for us the other lunchtime to 'Mon Plaisir' restaurant in Hill road and it will not be our last ! friendly helpful staff and the food was excellent, ambiance very good."
Just having a quick search on Google brought up this link to their website. I've got to agree with Mr Austin - it certainly looks the biz (see the photo to the right)!
Be interested to hear if anyone else rates it - I might even have to go and, in the name of investigative journalism, try it myself...

A bit of live music!

2006-08-16T15:55:00.000+01:00

Ok this site is not just all about Clevedon, but for people who live in Clevedon as well so heres info for when you fancy a night out in Bristol. Heres a real treat of a site. Follow this link to Podbop for listings of gigs coming up in Bristol, but... thats not all - as well as the gig info the site has MP3s for the bands, so you can check out whether they are your thing before you go. Very nice!

New Zealand

2006-08-14T12:29:00.000+01:00

This site receives RSS feeds - and I was somewhat annoyed to see that our top story today is about Clevedon New Zealand (thought I had set it up to filter these out). However it got me thinking about whether there was a connection between the two and wikipedia confirmed it - see below.
Now I will have to research who named it and where they came from. Any leads, please let me know!

Clevedon is a town within a city - a semi-rural settlement that is officially part of the Manukau city, one of the four cities that make up the conurbation of Auckland, New Zealand.

Clevedon by Murray Helm
The town and surrounding rural area has a population of 3,294 (2001 census), and is the centre of an administrative ward of Manukau which takes in much of the largely rural area to the east of the urban heart of the city.
Clevedon is located on the Wairoa River five kilometres from its estuary and outflow into the Tamaki Strait, an arm of the Hauraki Gulf. It is 14 kilometres from the centre of the city of Manukau, which lies to the northwest. To the south of Clevedon rise the rugged hills of the Hunua Ranges. Several popular beaches are located on the coast close to Clevedon, including Duders Beach and Kawakawa Bay.
Clevedon was named for Clevedon, England, in 1866. It was previously known as Te Wairoa (Māori: 'the Long River').

One for the diary....

2006-08-14T10:24:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you are all geared up for this, but if you haven't already seen the posters everywhere - a date for the diary is the 26th/27th August when the Clevedon Flower Show and Festival will be held at Salthouse Fields, Clevedon. As well as the flower show - the Mangled Wurzles will be playing - in fact theres going to be loads going on - I had a quick look at the Flowers Show Website (click here for the link) and the entertainment programme contains, amongst other things, puppets, face painting, a Beech Boys tribute band, an Abba one, Jazz, craft stalls, dog obediance training etc, etc!
Should be fun and hope the weather holds.
For further information tel. 01275 343132 and as ever if you have any photos / info etc, then feel free to e-mail it me to add to the site.

Site feedback and site developments

2006-08-10T13:15:00.000+01:00

Well – sorry I haven’t posted for a while, but I am working on something quite big for the site – a local business directory. After all, Clevedon is a town full of local businesses and various professionals, so if I can drum up any business for them, then all to the good – the more trade local businesses get, the more jobs there are, more tax revenue etc. Anyway, reasons aside, setting up the directory has involved a fair amount of web programming, which leads neatly onto the topic of this post. This site has been setup with RSS feeds – these are the things pulling in the weather, news, ebay items etc and also a lot of free tools from Bravnet – the polls, gallery etc. I would be very, very, very grateful if you as a visitor to this site could give me some feedback on what you think of the site – particularly in terms of if the RSS feeds are useful and whether you think that the Bravenet stuff adds useful features or is just annoying.
Constructive criticism much appreciated.
PS one last word about the business directory. I’ve input a lot of data and will be contacting businesses in the database, but just to pre-empt that – if you are a business / tradesman / retailer in Clevedon and would like to be listed then please contact me as usual. Being listed in the directory won’t cost you anything and I’ve set up some nifty features – such as being contactable by e-mail, a Googlemap showing where you are – ability to have descriptions and photos – ability to have “ancillary documents” attached to your listing (imagine you are a restaurant in Clevedon – why just have your phone number and address? Why not your opening times? Why not your menu? Photos of great dishes etc??? When I said this service is free : if you are the owner of Il Giardino wanting to advertise here and want to express your gratitude by offering my wife and me a free meal at your excellent establishment then I suppose on that occasion I could except this as payment in kind – wishful thinking there!!). Anyway if you want to take part in this – then drop me a line.

Strange things afoot

2006-08-01T11:19:00.000+01:00

Strange things have been afoot at the bowling green this weekend- thanks to Jessica for this and another nice photo - which are now in the gallery.

New to Clevedon

2006-08-01T09:31:00.000+01:00

Mr & Mrs Austin have e-mailed in to say:
We have only lived in Clevedon one year, we came here to be near daughter and son in law and their girls and are so pleased we made the move. we find Clevedon a very friendly town and enjoy talking to the local people. we have not been able to get involved too much yet as we are still needing to visit Surrey on a regular basis, but the point of this email is to praise Goulding Builders. They have been working in our house since early April, and we have had workers arrive when they say they are coming, they have done an excellent job and this weekend even Bob Goulding himself came to clear around the house, hoping to arrive before we were home. We would definitely recommend the company to everyone.

Best butchers

2006-08-01T09:30:00.000+01:00

Keith has e-mailed in to say:
How about a plug for high quality local butcher - Chris- in Station Rd. Some of the best meat around, excellent on the premises made sausages and burgers. My grand daughters favourite is the ham on the bone, and when my son visits he always comments how the eggs taste likes eggs!! But, my favourite is the bacon, you put it on the grill or frying pan and it comes out the same size! not full of water just flavour.

Title graphics

2006-07-31T15:25:00.000+01:00

I am back and will update the website - have had some e-mails come in, but first I thought as an experiment I would see if I can fit this nice illuminated letter into the title:

Break

2006-07-21T15:26:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone - this site is going to be static for a week - as I (the website administrator) am away - however when I get back there will be lots more useful information posted.
In the meantime, don't let this stop you from sending in information, comments, adding events etc. I'll put these all up when I get back.
A plea! How's about some restaurant reviews please? I've already mentioned the Bengal Spice - hows about a review 0f it from some of its customers?
Likewise Junior Poon - excellent in my view - but you may disagree.....
Finally I can't resist a plug for the fish and chip shop next to Kwik Save run by Thomas - yes, I know its only fish and chips, but his are just incredible!

Democracy in action #2 - Tourism

2006-07-18T16:04:00.000+01:00

The poll has been changed on this site, to address the question of Clevedons relationship with tourism.
Clive Bishop was kind enough to contact the site and to ask:
Do Clevedon residents want Tourism to the town to be developed ?
Would they like to have regular tourism events through out the year ?
Have your say by voting on the poll, but as well as the quantative feedback that this provides, why not use the comments to add qualatative feedback?

E-bay

2006-07-17T16:35:00.000+01:00

Yet another site tweak - if you look on the menu on the right hand side of the sight you can now find a section that says "Clevedon items on E-bay" followed by Show items. If you click on this link it will give you a list of the top ten (in terms of being closest to closing) of Clevedon related materials for sale on E-bay.
All good fun.

Panorama

2006-07-17T15:57:00.000+01:00

Just found a brilliant panorama of the pier at the BBC website here - really wierd, you can zoom and move around in the picture - just like being there!!

Classified Ads

2006-07-17T11:42:00.000+01:00

New toy #2, I've now added the ability for you guys to post or read classified ads - hope this is useful. Please bear in mind the ethos of this site, whilst it is for the community - its got to be community friendly - I will delete anything offensive that gets posted there.

Events Calendar

2006-07-17T11:27:00.000+01:00

Another toy for the site, I've added an events calendar here which anyone can put entries on - so if you know of an event - then post it up!

Democracy in action

2006-07-17T10:17:00.000+01:00

Well, one of the good things about being online is interactivity and as this site is about the community of Clevedon, lets put it to some use. I've upgraded the site again to allow voting - so if there is any particular issue that you want Clevedon residents to vote on, drop me a line as usual.
I'll kick things off by asking your opinion on the proposed expansion of Tescos. Is this a dire threat to local business and a pain from all the extra traffic coming in to use the store or a good opportunity for employment and a boost to the local economy?
What your opinion?
Link to the poll

Clevedon - gem of sunny Somerset

2006-07-15T11:36:00.000+01:00

Got sent a very nice GWR (Great Western Railway) poster advertising trips to Clevedon and have uploaded it to the photo gallery - quick preview along side of here.
Note that Marine Lake is in full use, nice to see that its being renevated - maybe it'll go back to looking like this again.
Really like the style of this - have been told its 1930s. If anyone else has anymore of these, please send them along.

Site Update

2006-07-14T12:06:00.000+01:00

This is a very young site, however my eventual hope is that people will start using it as a way of adding their own thoughts, feelings, topics, articles, discussions and photos to the site.

The aim is to make a virtual Clevedon community on the web.

To this end, I have added some tools to the site to make this easier.

We now have:

A photo gallery here
A tell a friend facility here

With the photo gallery I'm afraid I've turned off the option to let visitors post photos directly, I'm afraid you will have to submit them to me, the same way any content is submitted - by e-mailing it to emphyrio@hotmail.co.uk - the reason for this, as stated elsewhere, is that I want to be able to ensure we don't get malicious content on the site.

Re the tell a friend facility - this allows you to e-mail up to five people with details of this site. Please do use it to spread the word if you think this site is useful. Of course once it has more content, it will have more to recommend it!

The next tool I'm planning for this site is a free classified ads facility - to let Clevedon residents sell stuff in a similar way to local paper ads. I'll post when this facility is available.

In terms of content, everything so far has been posted by me (the website administrator), however this rather defies the point of the site, so I will be pushing the publicity in the coming weeks to ask people to contribute articles. I have already e-mailed the Curzon cinema (one of Clevedon's real treasures!) asking if they would care to pen an article, so I live in hope. But while waiting for this to arrive, I would invite you the reader to step forward and be the first person to get your article / photo / story / recommendation on the site!

Talking of recommendations - I had a curry from the Bengal Spice in Queen's Road this week, which was absolutely delicious - if you haven't had a curry from there yet then you really are missing out.

Eating and drinking in Clevedon

2006-07-11T09:44:00.000+01:00

The online pub guide Beer in the Evening lists and rates 10 Clevedon pubs here.
The pubs listed are:

The Clock Tower
The Crab Apple
The Drum and Monkey
The Little Harp
The Moon and Sixpence
The Old Inn
The Regent
The Star Inn
The Wagon and Horses
Ye Olde Bristol

Why not visit Clevedon's listing at Beer In The Evening, read the reviews and post your comments on Clevedon's pubs? Your views are very much appreciated!

Beautiful Clevedon

2006-07-10T15:54:00.000+01:00

Welcome to beautiful Clevedon, a website devoted to the lovely North Somerset sea-side town of Clevedon.
Here you will find all kinds of information about the town and the best ways to enjoy it - be you a resident or visitor!