near the coast in 2016-14

♫ Henley is the other side of Ashbocking a few miles north of Ipswich.  Tonight the Fat Band supported by duo Honey and the Bear (containing local ukulele goddess Lucy Sampson) are playing the community centre ... cash bar and light supper.

Open studios at Butley Mills this weekend which will no doubt include sculptor Craig Hudson.

We've only been to the Bealings once but they are absolutely charming and Saturday there's an extra reason to visit as a Healing, Psychic and Craft Fayre is being held in the village hall.

Sunday the Debach Airfield Museum will be open for the last time this year.

We arrived at the Maui Waui festival Theberton yesterday along with the first significant rain for weeks which wasn't that disruptive but OTOH didn't help.  The living art show was part burlesque part catwalk and the combination of electro swing soundtrack, highly effective lighting and a enthusiastic audience made quite an event ... looking forward to next year.

Free wedding open day at Butley Priory today 11am-3pm.and Free (the music not the beer) beer and music (sounds like a good combination) festival at the Hoxne Swan this bank holiday weekend. ♫

Diversions seem quite the thing around near the coast at the mo'.  This one is in Victoria Mill Road Framlingham which is closed maybe a hundred yards from the junction with Station Road.

Surprisingly three recent house sales in Monk Soham.

A woman died in a motorcycle accident yesterday evening in Walpole.

Driving through Witnesham last weekend we thought That PC repair shop has gone, well it was very isolated, looks like a private house now.  Passing today we saw it's End of a Rainbow, they've been there eighteen months but sadly (if appropriately) this weekend was their last.

near the coast in 2014.

Speed cameras today in Eye, Kenton, Melton and Woodbridge.

Over the past seven years FESPA have awarded more than £38,000 of bursaries to near the coast acting, dancing, music and stage management students.  If you are hoping to start a performing arts course this autumn make an application.

Entertainments around near the coast tonight include the second and last night Music Hall Moments (comedy, songs and sketches) in the Great Glemham village hall or the FRAmlingham residents have a St George's night of tuck and fun (including ♫ from the Broadside Boys) at Tommy Mills.

The near the coast April house sales review indicates that not surprisingly the start of the year has been slow.

The constabulary warn about telephone scams involving council tax, one in which the caller claims to be from the district council.

We lost useful broadband Saturday morning (thank you BT) which was a pity as we wanted to tell you about wrestling that evening at the Stonham Barns and The Outlaws at the Framlingham Con Club.  Coming back from The Outlaws we passed The Railway at 10:50pm just as a nun ran past presumably not wanting to miss last orders ... honest, a nun ... a bloke but in a wimple and habit.

The thing about chairman of the parish council James Arnold's highly illegal 460+ firearms stash in Wyverstone (the other side of Stowmarket from near the coast) was the some 200,000 rounds of ammunition and other explosives.  Kept in close proximity and a single room if there had been an accident there would ... more here

House sales busy in Woodbridge ... but then it's quite a big place for ntc.

On a Long Stratton corner opposite the Shell garage the smaller open all hours Co-op is now Funeral Services so on Sunday nights useful to know the Stradbroke Spar is open for travellers returning to near the coast.

As most of the grass near the coast was sodden Saturday we expected Thetford rugby club to be the same but either the pitch is remarkably well drained or it's been drier in that there Norfolk.  Despite a 31-0 shut out on international visitors the Rotterdam Trojans the Trojans sportingly played a final post game rush where hosts the Bury Saints brought on a tiny running back who took it in for a TD.

We thought it a little odd that the police were having a meet and greet at Clarke & Simpson's Campsea Ashe and definitely surprised by the packed car parks when we arrived.  The mobile police station and PCC Tim Passmore were there but the attraction was a farm machinery auction.  Very enjoyable, people in wellies poking at lumps of rotating metal whilst discussing it on the mobile and a Harwich farmer who told us of using a pole to force stacked bales off a sledge before sledges got a hinged tipper and then were made illegal.

Difference of opinion between Dr Dan Poulter MP for much of near the coast and a Stradbroke councillor and a prospective Stradbroke councillor.

We've been trying to crowbar this since February, with the catchy title Flaunt your Flowers you can help the St Elizabeth Hospice by opening your garden for half a day this summer.

Last week a burglary, thefts and a car stolen in Friston, and thefts from cars in Benhall and Sternfield.

Looks like the expected parties and all new faces (except for sitting MPs) in the constituencies Coastal and Central Suffolk this general election.  The only real bandit is Tony Holyoak standing as an English Democrat for Central Suffolk.  The English Democrats despite the name stand for Britishness apparently.

This coming May Stradbroke will have a contested parish council election, around near the coast most places probably won't bother ... don't know about Stackton Tressel.  Surprisingly applications to be a parish/town councillor have to be delivered to the district council by hand, in Stradders the parish clerk will deliver it for you.

The cuts have meant that the mobile police station near the coast now only goes out every six weeks and even the station seems to have shrunk.  OTOH they are going out until the end of the year with the next set of visits starting in Campsea Ashe at the end of the month.

Last night a woman died in hospital after a two car one driver collision in Friston.

A handbag and a satnav stolen from two cars in Shottisham last week and a large amount of fishing kit stolen from an Alderton garage at the end of last month.

The DAB (digital) radio network is to get 182 new transmitters with near the coast benefiting from new transmitters at Aldeburgh and Blythburgh.  Picking the bones out of a government document is an unsatisfying experience and we can't find a date for these two newbies beyond completion of all by 30 September 2016.

Internet community station Deben Radio ended broadcasting at the end of last year but listen again has remained up but today is its last day.

♫ Once the new year is out of the way near the coast tends to go into lock down especially if the weather is miserable so pleasant to see the open mike behind the Framlingham Castle this Sunday is hosted by Peck and Ramsay (that's Peck of Vix and the Kicks she does the make the effort).

An unlikely salvation for the Stonham Aspal Ten Bells, the back of it is now the Casa Mexico selling Mexican groceries, gifts, kitchenware, wrestling masks ... sounds like a winner.

11:32am:  Daisy Cooper who grew up in coastal Suffolk is one of the four standing for presidency of the Lib-Dems.  They're on the Daily Politics BBC2 at noon, it won't be on iPlayer.

FREE catalytic converter marking this Saturday morning at the Darsham Tyre Centre and you don't need an appointment.

The driver of a blue Fiesta died in Letheringham Saturday.

Any pub or ex-pub near the coast with eagles (the Pettistree Three Tuns) is likely to have been a Lacons pub.  The Great Yarmouth brewery served 1760 until 1968 when Whitbread who had bought it three years earlier closed it in the American manner.  To our surprise at least the brewery resuscitated last year ... what goes round comes round.

We all know how councils like signs, in Hackney (it's in the east of a large town near Chelmsford) they put signs on signs ... we'll see how long it takes to reach the Wickden Triangle.

We didn't start snapping until 8am last Sunday so it was the tail end of the 115 mile Dunwich Dynamo passing through near the coast but then the achievement of the less trained is perhaps the more impressive.  Narayani had previously ridden no further than 20 miles before her first Dynamo last year.  The Gentleman Plumber said he'd had fewer cyclists through his pop up cafe on the Saxmundham Road Framlingham but also said a Dun Runner coming back reported they'd never seen so many cyclists at Dunwich, perhaps the unsettled weather put some off.

In this part of Suffolk you're more likely to be run down by a mobility scooter than an inline skater but we do like its been here forever bumptiousness ... and though unfair to say it's still the 1950s near the coast we have heard that sugar rationing didn't end in Stackton Tressel until 1986 ...

At the end of the nineteenth century there was no speedway or annoying hatchbacks to entertain young men so TWOKing pony and traps was popular amongst the rougher elements of near the coast.  Fortunately taking the stolen transportation to a remote spot and setting it alight had not become fashionable but in his East African column Peregrine Cuttlefish clearly thought such joy riding indicated the imminent collapse of civilization as it was then known.

Next week the inaugural women's Tour of Britain flirts with near the coast twice.  Stage 3 Felixstowe-Clacton on Friday passes just south of Woodbridge and the final and fifth stage on Sunday passes to the west of Stowmarket to finish in Bury St Edmunds.

It's why we l♥ve near the coast, toothpaste stolen in Cratfield is a reported crime though on this occasion we suspect there might be a little bit more to it.

This is not the welcome you'll get at the Bentwaters Cold War Museum Rendlesham, the museum is literally dripping with volunteers eager to tell you about the history and the museum, there's an excellent little cafe and the rare right hand drive coach/ambulance will make you expect Hawkeye and Hotlips running up the aisle shouting medic emergency speak.  They are open this Sunday and Monday.

Shingle Street Wednesday

A beautiful day yesterday for our first visit to Ramsholt where there was a harbour master and lots of boats but nobody much to be met and greeted by the police's second Marine Watch meet and greet of the day ... but not wasted, the cops have shown they are about and we've seen a piece of Sandlings heaven.

Fellow Twitterer @Jaydubblah asks do any nearthecoasters know of really wheelchair friendly eating places in East Suffolk?  Need room to manoeuvre.