'The Curious Savage' is to be performed at the Phoenix Theatre, Ross-on-Wye from Friday 14th to Saturday 22nd October 2005.

The Curious Savage is a play which was originally written as a vehicle for actress, Lillian Gish, who began her career in silent movies but became an all-around film star.

The author of the play, John Patrick, also wrote 'Tea House of the August Moon' and both plays were a big hit on Broadway.

The Phoenix Theatre production is directed by David Edwards, an experienced writer/performer recently returned from the USA. As well as appearances at both the Bristol and London Old Vic, David spent six years with the BBC as an actor and appeared in the 1950s Robin Hood series.

The cast:
Back row: Joanna Hicks as Fairy May, Tom Brooks as Jeff, Suzanne Hill as Mirabelle, Alan Lane as Titus, Dave Thomson as Samuel, Angela Mason as Mrs. Paddy and Paul Edmunds as Hannibal.
Front row: Paul Delaney as Dr. Emmett, Nikki Wilson as Mrs. Savage and Annette O'Hare as Miss Willie.
Director, David Edwards in front, laying down.

Michael Park, a local resident and prominent figure in the World Rally Championship (WRC) was sadly, fatally injured in a competitive accident during the British round of the WRC held in Wales on Sunday 19th September.

Michael, or "Beef" as he was affectionately known, was co-driver to one of the leading drivers in the championship and was paired with the Estonian driver Markko Martin, as part of the Peugeot 307 WRC team. The WRC mirrors Formula 1 in it's tour of the world, with sixteen rallies held across all five continents during the season. Michael had risen through the ranks to compete at the very highest level of the sport.

Michael's funeral will be held at noon, on Thursday 6th October at the St. Bartholomew's Church, Much Marcle.

At the recent Les Routiers awards dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel, Park Lane in London, Aspen House, a guest house in Hoarwithy scooped the B&B of the Year award for Wales and the Marches.

The typical Les Routiers establishment, according to the Les Routiers 'Hotel & Restaurant Guide' is 'idiosyncratic, hospitable, offering home-cooked fresh local produce and exceeding expectations within a realistic budget'.

Said proprietors, Sally Lawrence and Rob Elliott, 'We are flattered to be deemed good enough to be eligible for membership of Les Routiers, but to be given this award is an unexpected honour.

We are passionate about food which means that we fly the flag for real food - food as it should be, food that is prepared and cooked from scratch. We are alarmed by the way food has been industrialized and adulterated, even in ways that are not obvious. On the positive side, we are lucky to live in Herefordshire with access to some of the best produce in the country, including exceptional quality rare breed meats and a surprisingly wide seasonal variety of local fruit and vegetables.

Practically without exception, we buy direct from small independent producers. That way we can guarantee freshness, taste and provenance. As for bread, cakes, preserves, ice cream and even baked beans, we make them all at home, again using the finest ingredients we can source.'

Ross Pre-school Playgroup won the Ross in Bloom, 'Ross Gazette Shield for the Children's Planter or Garden Competition'. Pictured below by their planters are Tabitha Fycun, James Burford, Lizzy Chinn and Zoe Pritchard with playgroup leaders Vicki Page and Michelle Gwilliam.

Although, with the main tourist season over, the amount of individual visitors to Wyenot.com during September dropped a little compared to August, the number of pages viewed soared. A high percentage of the pages viewed did not show up on the visible counter because they were pages of the Gallery, which the visible counter does not count. The popularity of my photographs of the Upton Bishop 'Mamma Mia' concert is responsible for this, which makes me a little mad actually. Having spent eight hours photographing that particular event, I have not heard a single word from the organizers, since I told them I was not willing to just give them the photographs on a CD for free so that they could print and publish them at their will. Out of interest, the total amount of 'profit' I made from that job by way of newspaper royalties and print sales was £11.20 - less income tax and travel expenses, which probably in fact amounts to a financial loss. I expect the organizers will be in touch again when they want more free publicity but, not only does my body weight match that of a small elephant - so does my memory.

On a very positive note, the new A to Z index I added to the site earlier in the month has proved to be very popular and attained the status of being the twelfth most visited page of the whole site, within the first two weeks of its going live.

Also on a positive note, feedback from guest houses advertising on the site, particularly those who advertise exclusively on Wyenot.com is that they are still taking bookings. Both The Ark and No.11 Wye Street have reported that they have bookings throughout October and into November, directly from Wyenot.com.

The main visitor figures for Wyenot.com between 1st and 30th September 2005:

September average daily page views: 4,762.
September maximum daily page views: 67,336.

Hits: 567,068.
Unique human visitors: 19,475.
Number of pages viewed by above visitors: 142,888.
Data downloaded (bandwidth used): 6,795,827 Kbytes. (6.7 GBytes)

The top ten most visited pages on Wyenot.com over the same period, highest to lowest were:

Home Page
Site Map
News
Accommodation
Pubs
Photographic Street Map
Shops
The Saracen's Head Advertising Page
Yat Rock
Goodrich Castle 2005.

August Unique Visitor figures for the web site over the past five years:

September 2001: 216
September 2002: 913
September 2003: 2,973
September 2004: 9,052
September 2005: 19,475
The Hits and Page View figures for the month of September over the same period are many times higher.

The main visitor statistics for 2005 from 1st January to 30th September are as follows:

Hits: 3,412,368
Unique human visitors: 155,286
Number of pages viewed by above visitors: 567,042
Data downloaded (bandwidth used): 44,698,826 Kbytes. (44.6 GBytes)

Thank you for your visit and I hope you were able to find what you were looking for!

I was rather hoping this week to publish photographs of Monday's eclipse of the sun, which was an annular eclipse over parts of Spain and Africa but a very good partial over England. However, in true British style, here in Ross-on-Wye, the sun was eclipsed by both the moon and total cloud cover.

I was out in my office at the time of the event with the door open, hoping for a break in the grey cloud layer but to no avail. It was however, still an interesting experience with the sky darkening to the point of upsetting the local wild life - the air growing very still with an eerie, virtual silence descending - just a few birds could be heard, chirping their 'panic' calls. The general atmosphere somehow became depressing at the time of maximum moon cover. I also recorded a drop in outside temperature of one degree Celsius.

As I cannot show this particular eclipse, below are photographs of two others I have caught in the past. The top photograph was taken through a break in the cloud cover during the evening partial eclipse of 10th May 1994. The bottom one is of the partially eclipsed sun rising above the eastern horizon during the dawn eclipse of 31st May 2003.