Today's County in the spotlight

[mickthemaverick]

Sea Spring Farm, West Bexington, Dorchester, Dorset, DT2 9DD is famous for what

REgards Neil

Hot off the press:

Spoiler: show

That would be the company that created the Dorset Naga Chilli!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Correct. Number one in the world at the time on the Scoville Scale , but been surpassed now.

Did you know about it Mick or did you look it up?

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

I had no idea at all so DDG'd out of curiosity. Discovered a lot about the farm before I found what made them famous

[NewcastleFalcon]

What's the difference between an Austin A40 Dorset and an Austin A40 Devon

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

One's a 2 door and one's a 4 door but I can't remember which is which !

[NewcastleFalcon]

One's a 2 door and one's a 4 door but I can't remember which is which !

The 2-door Dorset is considerably rarer than the 4 door Devon, and much of the original production of the Dorset was exported, many to Australia, where locally-built open-top versions were available. Very few Dorset saloons survive.

Total production of the Devon saloon was 273,958.
Total production of the Dorset was just 15,939.
( https://www.austincounties.org.uk/?page_id=60 )

https://rareaustins.com/austin-a40-dorset

REgards Neil

[bobins]

Dorset Blue Vinney cheese
Jon Sullivan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dorset Blue Vinney (frequently spelled "vinny") is a traditional blue cheese made near Sturminster Newton in Dorset, England, from cows' milk. It is a hard, crumbly cheese. It was formerly made of skimmed milk.
"Vinney" may be the Dorset form of the archaic word "vinny" 'moldy' or perhaps a corruption of "veiny", referring to its blue veins.
Historically the cheese was merely a by-product of the much more lucrative butter market. Milk was of little value before the railways as it could not be brought to market before it went off, thus cheese and butter production was the main focus of dairy farms. Dorset butter was highly regarded in London where it fetched a premium price but making butter left the farmers with large quantities of skimmed milk which they turned into a hard, crumbly cheese.
While the cheese was a common farmhouse cheese in Dorset for hundreds of years, production nearly dried up after the Second World War, and was made in very small quantities on just a few farms. However, in the 1980s Woodbridge Farm in Dorset revived the old recipe, and it is now producing the cheese again, but with whole milk.
In his poem "Praise O' Do'set", the Dorset poet William Barnes asks,

Woont ye have brown bread a-put ye,
An' some vinny cheese a-cut ye?

[Peter.N.]

We have hardly been anywhere in Dorset for the last couple of years, my car had only done 650 miles since the last MOT! The wife goes out shopping to Axminster but that is of course in Devon but our nearest town.

We went to Scotland last year and I hope again this year. Our only really regular trip is to Beaminsh, but that's in Co Durham of course. We use the wife's car for long trips, has all the bells and whistles.

Peter

[NewcastleFalcon]

I think we need the TV repair and Service bloke from Dorset brought forward into Dorset's day in the spotlight...



Regards Neil

[Peter.N.]

I did a few miles that week I was in Holland near Rotterdam. I didn't go to repair the TV though. Lovely car that was.

Peter

[NewcastleFalcon]

Dorset has had its moment 89 left to randomly select.
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There are 92 historic counties in England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, each will have a mere day-ish in the spotlight selected at random.

Here's the pool

Spoiler: show

Here's the tool
https://www.random.org/

Could someone just jump in and select the next County please. The random tool is easy and just look up the number in the pool and off we go.

I always feel it adds a further touch of extra randomness when I don't do the process myself.

Regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

Give Warwickshire a go, my home county.
https://www.warwickshirehistory.org.uk/publications.php
https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/cont ... try-houses

[NewcastleFalcon]

Give Warwickshire a go, my home county.
https://www.warwickshirehistory.org.uk/publications.php

I like it selected at random gibbo! Whole point of the thread. Go on use the random tool and come up with a number and we'll see what pops out. Takes 2 seconds and I guarantee Warwickshire will pop out in its random turn at some point!

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

The random tool

https://www.random.org/

Give me a number

Regards Neil

[Peter.N.]

If I can briefly return to the car's, I didn't know there was an A 40 Dorset, don't ever recall seeing one although I probably must have done. The Devon was the early one replaced by the Somerset in about '54. The Devon had a bonnet that uncovered the whole engine and included the grill but the Somerset had a small flattish one one that only opened a small hole between the wings, the grill being permanently fixed.

I learnt to drive in an A40 van which had the Devon bonnet but was also made during the production of the Somerset, I think ours was a'54, SKR244 if my memory serves me correctly. Appropriate for where we live now but we lived in Kent then! The grill on that was painted but had chrome strips on it, the Devon car had a sort of cast alloy grill.

Nice car to drive in its day, 4 speed column change and 1200 cc 'B' series OHV engine. Did my first head gasket job on that.

Peter