New Stour & Avon, August 13, 2021
Back with a quack: Duck race returns for In Bloom event The annual Wimborne in Bloom Duck Race is returning once again on Saturday, August 28 at 4pm. The ducks will be launched into the River Allen at the bottom of Mill Lane and
cross the finishing line in the garden at the back of the Rising Sun in East Street. There are six money prizes to be won with the owner of the first duck home receiving £50.Tickets costing £1 each will be on
sale outside the Co-Op Store in Crown Mead and hopefully outside Waitrose on the days before the race. And an advance date for your diaries is Sunday, September 5, when again after a year’s absence the
ever popular Open Gardens Day returns. There will be 16 gardens open in and around Wimborne Minster in aid of Wimborne in Bloom. Watch out for details on posters around the town.
Going loco with model rail’s new train
ON TRACK: Mayor Kelly Webb with the new train at Wimborne Model Town Pictures: TOM SCRASE
A Wimborne locomotive made its first run on the tracks of Wimborne Model Town’s railway layout on Thursday. Members of the miniature railway team have been busy preparing an 00 gauge engine, which has been
sponsored by Mayor Kelly Webb, with Wimborne nameplates and the town council’s crest. A spokesman said: “Originally painted malachite green with sunshine stripes, West Country class steam
locomotives brought a touch of colour to the post war tracks of the Southern and Somerset and Dorset railways which we have recorded in our local railway history display. “Although regularly passing through Wimborne, the
town’s name was never assigned to one of the streamlined engines until now.” The Mayor visited to see the inaugural run of the steamer and also a late 1950s British Rail Class 31 Diesel model bearing her name.
Clear skies key to viewing Milky Way Night sky events with Bob Mizon MBE of the Wessex Astronomical Society Light-polluted urban areas aren’t suited to looking up and considering our place in the universe. In August, escape the town’s glow late one cloudless, moonless evening and treat yourself to a view of the Milky Way, our own home galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars spread high across the night sky at this time of year. Our Sun is one of these teeming drifts of stars. It rushes at 10
over 800,000 kilometres an hour around the Galactic Centre. This dense, brighter part of the Milky Way lies to the south from where we live, though we cannot see
the supermassive central black hole that lurks in that direction. The starry stream of the Milky Way thins out and fades as it courses above our heads and drops towards
the north-east . The dark patches in it are dust clouds, the ashes of ancient dead stars from which everything – including us – is made. Clear skies!
