DOWNLOADING photographs taken around Bridport over Christmas, I suddenly found myself looking twice at this one, and wondering - what is that in the sky? Could it really be a UFO? Here’s a closer look. I have to say, I don’t think it’s a UFO – it must be the moon – but I’ve never seen it in quite this guise before.

I WAS thinking the other day about Colin Varndell, because I was trying to draw up a list in my head of excellent West Dorset people and organisations. By excellent, I mean almost gratuitously obsessed with quality, and with the means and the skill to produce superb results. The first individuals that came to mind [...]

SO, WEST DORSET has a new artistic venue: Axen Farm outside Symondsbury. Probably just two miles from Bridport town centre, but it feels startlingly like another world, as you suddenly rock up towards the end of a narrow track and find yourself faced with the northern side of Colmers Hill, with just a fleck of Bridport visible eastwards. Dragonflies dart around the improvised car park and the [...]

PHOTOGRAPHS and stories from along the Jurassic Coast of Dorset and East Devon are being sought to help explain the past and perhaps shape the future. The last Labour Government gave Dorset and Devon county councils, plus numerous partners, £376,500 to explore how seaside communities might adapt to meet the challenges of coastal change. Dorset [...]

News that stays news THE ARTIST John Skinner, when he lived in Bothenhampton, used to say to me: “Why can’t we have the kind of news which says: ‘Today John Skinner finished a xxxxing fantastic painting – and here it is’. “That’s the kind of TV news I’d like to see.” I used to agree with [...]

THERE’S a superb photograph of the Bettiscombe potter Tim Hurn in a new book coming out next month. It shows Tim carefully reaching out from the mouth of his kiln for a plankful of pots. The kiln itself is surrounded by gigantic quantities of wood. Different sorts and different sizes burn in different ways, and at different rates, and this helps [...]

SOMETIMES you see something and you think, wow, that’s good, and so it is with a new West Dorset blog called And in my hands a camera. It’s photographs, mostly, with comments explaining their taker’s motivations and methods. They are good pictures – very good.   Look at this for example: This is one of a series of night-time [...]

I DON’T know who Bearded Git is, but he’s got a website where he calls himself that, and he spends his holidays in Dorset,  takes photos, then posts them online. This picture of Colmers Hill, just outside Bridport, is from his website. I think it’s one of the best pictures of Colmers Hill – if not the best – that [...]