The SoGlos.com Blog

Sudeley Castle Ballooning Grand Prix 2008

As SoGlos.com's modest number of YouTube videos creep ever closer to having been watched two million times - and around five million times on various other video websites around the world - it's time for a fifth instalment in the form of the Sudeley Castle Ballooning Grand Prix 2008, filmed during the weekend event at the popular county attraction...

There surely couldn't be a better setting than Gloucestershire for the Ballooning Grand Prix, and here's to hoping it becomes a regular fixture on the county events calendar. In the meantime, don't miss SoGlos.com's fantastic selection of Gloucestershire attractions to keep you busy through the summer.

New Gloucestershire events calendars

While readers regularly get in touch to say how much they enjoy the Gloucestershire events calendar, the SoGlos.com team has also been asked to come up with specific calendars for the six main areas of our fine county. Hey presto! Check out the new, dedicated Cheltenham events calendar, Cotswolds events calendar, Forest of Dean events calendar, Gloucester events calendar, Stroud events calendar and, last but not least, the Tewkesbury events calendar. With longer days and the weather brightening up, there's never been a better time to get out there and enjoy everything Gloucestershire has to offer...

The Everyman Theatre sponsors SoGlos.com

It is with great pleasure that we welcome The Everyman Theatre onboard as a sponsor of SoGlos.com's dedicated Gloucestershire Theatre & Comedy section, and the team here are all looking forward to working closely with the theatre over the coming months. For those not in the know; The Everyman Theatre is one of Gloucestershire's most important entertainment venues, playing host to an exciting array of performances from local and touring companies. You can read more about  The Everyman Theatre on their website.

The Everyman Theatre's sponsorship comes at a time when SoGlos.com continues to go from strength to strength as Gloucestershire's leading arts and entertainment media, having also just unveiled a plethora of behind-the-scenes changes across the online magazine. While our development team are jumping for joy, we don't want to bore you with all the technical nitty gritty but, needless to say, there's even more just around the corner...

Cheltenham events, The Guardian and SoGlos.com

With the Wednesday 12 March day of the Cheltenham Festival having been cancelled due to adverse weather conditions, it was refreshing to see Stuart Jefferies from The Guardian recognise the spa town has plenty more to offer visitors any day of the year - perhaps thanks to a little help from SoGlos.com. From events at the Everyman Theatre and Cheltenham Townhall to The Playhouse, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum and Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, Jeferies' article takes readers on a whistle-stop tour of the town.

And the team here are delighted to see SoGlos.com cited in the piece which was printed in the newspaper and appeared online on Thursday 13 March - a testament to the fact there's no better resource for residents and visitors (and journalists researching the area...) to make the most of their free time in Cheltenham.

Gloucestershire spas, restaurants, music and more

With the New Year in full swing, the SoGlos.com team have already been busy, busy, busy. Highlights include the new Gloucestershire Spa break guide, a review of modern European eatery Merlot Brasserie in Cheltenham and a preview of the not-to-be-missed Cheltenham Folk Festival 2008 - not to mention a whole host of new Gloucestershire events just around the corner. You'll also find the Gloucestershire live music gig guide, Gloucestershire art exhibition guide and Gloucestershire restaurant reviews jam-packed as ever. And who said January was a miserable month?...

New Gloucestershire Theatre & Comedy section

The SoGlos.com team are delighted to announce the online magazine's brand new, dedicated Gloucestershire Theatre & Comedy section.

Theatre and comedy events were previously covered in the Gloucestershire Art & Culture section, but with the wealth of fantastic performances being held at venues including The Everyman Theatre, The Roses Theatre, The Bacon Theatre, Cheltenham Town Hall and Gloucester's Guildhall - cramming everything in was no mean feat.

The new section will thus offer Gloucestershire residents and visitors an unrivaled guide to county stage performances, while the team will be able to focus more on attractions, art and museums in the original Gloucestershire Art & Culture section.

Gloucestershire Pride of Place

The national Pride of Place website has set out to try and find the locations and attractions across England which members of the public are most proud of. Some local personalities have been asked to provide nominations to get the ball rolling; with Mark Cummings from the BBC Gloucestershire Breakfast Show nominating Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons, and Gloucestershire Echo Newspaper editor Anita Syvret going for Dover’s Hill – while there are a number of other attractions and beauty spots on the list.

Berkeley Castle, Bibury, Bourton-on-the-Water, Cheltenham, Gloucester Cathedral, Symonds Yat, The Sculpture Trail and the view from Cleeve Hill – as well as the two mentioned above – have all made it. The last time we looked Bourton-on-the-Water had a clear lead with 34 per cent of votes – perhaps due to the Facebook campaign which has quickly organised itself to muster support. Head over to the Pride of Place website to show support for your favourite attraction. You might also want to check our SoGlos.com's comprehensive directory of Gloucestershire attractions.

Cheltenham Literature Festival 2007 - Day Four

8 October – Ken Loach

While there was a noticeable decline in the traffic circulating around Cheltenham’s one-way streets today, the Cheltenham Literature Festival was nonetheless buzzing with dedicated booklovers who had managed to wrangle a day off work to attend Monday’s line-up of events.

Unluckily for the SoGlos.com team, and all the other ticketholders of course, Ken Loach unfortunately had to pull out of his Cheltenham Town Hall talk this evening due to personal reasons.

The acclaimed British director of cult classics including Kes and Cathy Come Home was sorely missed, but has not been the only guest to cancel his date at this year’s Literature Festival at the last minute, with Russell Brand also disappointing fans on Saturday evening.

Ticketholders for the Ken Loach event have all been promised refunds, however, by contacting the Cheltenham Literature Festival box office on (01242) 227979.

Buy Kes for £4.97 at amazon.co.uk.

Cheltenham Literature Festival 2007 - Day Three

7 October 2007 -  Lucy and Stephen Hawking

It’s not very often that a theoretical physicist commands the rapturous applause of hundreds of members of the public, but Professor Stephen Hawking isn’t just any theoretical physicist. Not only is he the bestselling author of the popular science title A Brief History of Time, but the scientist has now turned to children’s writing too, not to mention being a Simpsons character.

In an extremely rare public appearance, Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy Hawking saw Cheltenham Literature Festival goers flocking to the Centaur quite literally by the bus-load today, to hear more about the father and daughter’s co-written book George’s Secret Key to the Universe.

The family-friendly event, held in association with Gloucestershire’s Star Centre, saw Lucy explain more about the story of George – a boy who, with the help of his neighbour Annie and her scientist father Eric, uses a super computer to create doors to anywhere in the universe.

Lucy’s enthusiastic storytelling also took the audience on a journey across the solar system during the morning talk, littering her presentation with videos of interviews with astronauts, as well as giving the audience a fistful of informative facts – did you know for example that one million planet earths can fit into the sun? No, neither did we – but it’s bound to come up in a pub quiz at some point.

Next it was her father’s turn in the limelight as Stephen Hawking talked about black holes in an accessible way that the kids in the crowd may have understood, but at times had the parents scratching their heads, before cracking a few jokes at the expense of the French. The mind-expanding voyage came to a close, with just enough time for a few questions from the audience, which ended with the particularly profound question: ‘What did it feel like to be on the Simpsons?’ to which Professor Hawking replied: ‘I liked being given rocket launchers, but wasn’t so keen on my yellow face’.

For all who attended this very special event, seeing one of the modern day's most influential scientists was a rare privilege and a true highlight of this year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Buy George's Secret Key to the Universe for £7.74 at amazon.co.uk.

Cheltenham Literature Festival 2007 - Day Two

6 October 2007 – Michael Palin

With queues of crawling traffic causing chaos across Prestbury, Michael Palin’s popularity has never been more visible, and frustrating, for those making their way to the Centaur to see the Monty Python’s sell-out talk at the Cheltenham Racecourse.

Those with enough luck, or foresight, to have secured their Centaur seats were thanked for their persistence today though as Palin took the capacity audience on a breathtaking whistle-stop, slide-show journey across New Europe – which the sixty-something swore ‘will definitely be my last trip,’ before adding ‘but then again I said that after 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway, Sahara and Himalaya… I seem to keep getting my arm twisted by the rest of the crew.’   

Complementing the BBC television series and his new book, cunningly-entitled Michael Palin’s New Europe, we were transported from the snow-topped mountains of Slovenia through Croatia and the former Yugoslavia to Albania, before traipsing onwards to Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, with a sojourn to and The Ukraine  and The Czech Republic, then onwards through Slovakia, former East Germany, Poland, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, before finally following the presenter’s footsteps to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

In just over an hour the audience was pelted with cultural and historical facts at a dizzying speed, with just enough breaths for Palin’s slick presentation to be littered with comedic off-camera anecdotes of truffle omelette stirring, making a Sufi imam laugh, getting caught in a snow blizzard and his wife’s difficulties reading him the football scores while he’s traipsing the globe, not to mention Pakistan accidentally buying the rights to Monty Python's Flying Circus and meeting a group of eastern European lumberjacks, who were ‘all okay’.

While an envious shade of green collectively emitted from the audience after hearing the tall tales of the presenter’s global gallivanting, we would all agree that battling through Cheltenham’s road-rage-inducing traffic paled in comparison to some of Michael Palin’s exploits – but our individual journeys to hear the small screen legend speak was more than worth the effort.

Buy Michael Palin's New Europe from £10 at amazon.co.uk.