The SoGlos.com Blog

British Shin Kicking Championship 2008

While Gloucestershire has already seen it's fair share of wacky events take to the county in the last couple of weeks (okay, one, but the Cheese Rolling is surely the wackiest of them all...) - the British Shin Kicking Championship 2008, forming part of the Cotswold Olimpick Games 2008, is the latest event to draw in spectators from far and wide, including the SoGlos.com team armed with a video camera.

There's also a full review and picture gallery of the event SoGlos.com. Only time will tell whether Internet audiences from around the world become as fascinated with this annual Gloucestershire spectacular.

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...

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.

Featured on the YouTube homepage again

It looks like YouTube's viewers can't get enough of Gloucestershire's wacky events, as SoGlos.com's video of the Bourton-on-the-Water Football in the River has just been selected for the video website's homepage - following in the footsteps of the Cheese Rolling video featured on YouTube earlier in the year.

No doubt tens of thousands of viewers will be watching the latest video over the coming days, which is great news for our fine county and for Gloucestershire's leading online magazine.

Gloucestershire makes another Stateside splash

It looks like we may have spoken too soon in suggesting SoGlos.com's football in the river video isn't going to be able to match the fame of the cheese rolling video - as we've just received news the Bourton Rovers action is being featured on American website collegehumor.com - a YouTube-esque site which reaches a staggering 6.21 million unique users every month - with emails about the event flocking in faster than you can say 'goaaaaaaaallllll'.

Bourton-on-the-Water Football in the River 2007

While SoGlos.com's latest Bourton-on-the-Water Football in the River video hasn't yet lived up to its predecessor - the world-famous SoGlos.com cheese rolling video as seen at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and on websites and TV shows around the world - it has already been creating some attention for the Cotswolds and Gloucestershire - being featured as a hot video on men's mag website zooweekly and on a plethora of peculiar websites around the world. So, if you haven't yet seen it...

For more info and pictures of this year's event, please see the article on SoGlos.com.

Bourton Rovers Football in the River

The annual Bourton Rovers Football in the River taking place this forthcoming weekend has to be up there with the cheese rolling as a contender for Gloucestershire's wackiest event.

While the SoGlos.com team are already looking forward to this year's action, we were delighted to have been contacted by one of our readers today, who spotted the picture SoGlos.com published featuring her father playing the beautiful game in the River Windrush more than 70 years ago.

Hurrah, the water is back on

Gloucestershire breathed a collective sigh of relief yesterday as a majority of homes and business across the county had running water for the first time in a week.

While we are still brushing our teeth with Evian and are ignoring the mounting piles of washing-up, the SoGlos.com office is a far less smelly place to be now - with a freshly showered team extolling the virtues of washing machines to an almost scary level.

With the excuses for taking it easy washed down the plug hole, we are all beavering away to bring our readers even more exclusive news about Gloucestershire's biggest and best events. While the last few weeks have seen some of the summer's highlights cancelled or postponed, there is plenty to look forward in the Gloucestershire, now the freak weather is (hopefully) behind us. 

Looking respectable for the first time in days, a few of the team are heading off to the Cotswolds this afternoon, so expect to read about a selection of the area's excellent restaurants, shops and hotels on SoGlos.com soon.