THE WI held their spring flower and craft show and it proved a popular event – not only for talented competitors in craft, gardening, home baking, painting and photography… even the men’s class had a record 10 entries for the rock cakes.

The public were allowed to view early afternoon followed by the presentations by our new vicar Reverend Ada Whittock.

Everyone was delighted to see Joan Tatler there following her horrific motor accident when her car collided with a police car on a test run just outside Langton Herring and to add to the afternoon she won the cup for the handicraft class with some outstandingly beautiful entries.

The overall winner of the 2009 Cup for the highest points overall for the show was Ann Lassiter.

Cups were also presented to Joyce Pugh (floral art), Sheila Williams (gardening) Maureen Adams (produce) David McKinna (photography and rock cakes) Ann Martin (paintings) and in the children’s classes Kitty Sinclair (five to seven-year-olds) and Shannon Doble (eight to 11-year-olds).

  • BACK in December I began reporting on a group of hard-working villagers who had got together to form the Traffic Action Group with a single aim to improve and calm the traffic driving through Portesham village before it meets the B3157 Bridport to Weymouth road.

All the members had met up over several months with grave concerns on the rapidly increasing volume, size and noise of cars and lorries now using this road and the inevitable pollution and especially the safety issues for the children and the elderly.

Since that date a business plan, tables of statistics, plans and drawings for suggested proposals in Portesham and notes and photographs taken in other villages in Dorset who had suffered similar problems and achieved solutions, which were all presented to the Chesil Bank Parish Council, Highways Authority, Dorset County Council, Oliver Letwin, and Rural England.

Two open meetings were also held inviting representatives of the above authorities to attend so that villagers could air their views over the proposals and plans and put forward any other ideas that were relevant to the overall scheme.

Finally last month at an extraordinary general meeting of the Chesil Bank Parish Council they voted in favour of proceeding with the final plans in consultation with the Highways Authority.

This is the first milestone in a long process, democratically presented, to achieve the aim of obtaining safety and calming of traffic through our village street, which were planned over four months ago and hopefully will become a reality.