Dawlish News' Posts

A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system. The planet was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, Calif. The discovery was announced today by planetary scientist Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose research is partly funded by NASA. The planet is a typical ...

High summer has arrived at Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve and, despite the recent dry weather, there is a wealth of stunning countryside flora to be seen. Many residents and visitors alike agree that a walk along the dunes of this spectacular reserve takes some beating when it comes to a real live show of colour. Teignbridge senior warden Andrea Buckley explained: "Spring brings many of ...

A teenage girl has had to abandon her solo sail across the Channel in a 13ft dinghy. Megan Baker, 17, from Dawlish, Devon, set off from the river Exe estuary, but had to turn back after six hours because she was making insufficient headway in calm conditions. The youngster, who has dreams of competing in the 2012 Olympics, now hopes to take on her 103 mile voyage to Cherbourg in her Laser craft ...

The mayor of Dawlish, Cllr Graham Price, has officially opened the town's new community drop-in centre. Cllr Price said he was pleased to see the centre finally opening after a five-year battle to get it for Dawlish. More than 35 people attended the opening of the new centre, which has been named Open Daw. It is in the vestibule of the town's Methodist Church. Margaret Noel, of Dawlish Library, ...

The owner of a crumbling grade two listed building in Teignbridge faces legal action unless something is done to stop the building collapsing. The Old Vicarage in Weech Road, Dawlish, is owned by a London man and has been empty for 20 years. The property was listed in 1951 as a grade two building of special architectural and historic importance. The original house is thought to date from the 17th ...

Exeter and Dawlish are in line to stage birthday celebrations for one of Britain's greatest engineers, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Next year marks 200 years since his birth and the South West, home of his Great Western Railway, is to be at the centre of commemoration events. Bristol is to take the leading role but celebrations are also pencilled in for Exeter and Dawlish. Brunel ran his wide-gauge ...

Families of MG Rover workers made redundant when the car giant collapsed were being welcomed aboard the first of five free train services to the seaside today. Virgin Trains is laying on special trains from Longbridge station to the Devon resorts of Dawlish Warren, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Torquay and Paignton this week. The trains will leave Longbridge railway station each morning for the ...

A new CCTV control room in the centre of Newton Abbot will help police detect more crime, the Devon and Cornwall force says. They are also hoping the scheme will be extended to cover smaller towns, including Bovey Tracey and Dawlish. The scheme is being jointly funded by the police, the district council and the town council. Police say other towns in Teignbridge are now expressing an interest in ...

Teignbridge is promoting the government's walking the way to health scheme with a timetable of short guided rambles up to six days a week free of charge. Walk This Way Teignbridge strolls take less than an hour and all ages are welcome, including people in pushchairs and wheelchairs. There is no need to book, just turn up for walks around Bovey Tracey, Buckfastleigh, Chudleigh, Dawlish, ...

Some of South Devon's very best beaches have been given the thumbs-up by a conservation charity. The Marine Conservation Society Good Beach Guide is one of four beach award initiatives, but it is the only scheme that focuses entirely on water quality standards and the risk of sewage pollution, rather than beach management. The society will only recommend beaches in the guide if they meet the Blue ...

A 17-year-old is recovering in Torbay Hospital after being stabbed in the leg on Satuday evening. The teenager, who was not local, was walking through Brunswick Place at around 11pm when he was assaulted. His injuries are not thought to be life-threatening. Early Sunday morning a trail of blood could be seen along Brunswick Place and on to the Lawn, and the police soon taped off the area for ...

Someone has been busy sending dawlish.com users a bogus email claiming to be from the 'dawlish.com team'. These clever people also decided to send one to the webmaster! SO PLEASE BE AWARE. The email reads along the lines of:- "Dear user of dawlish.com, Your account has been used to send a huge amount of spam messages during the last week. We suspect that your computer was compromised and ...

A Devon council has held back a number of postal votes after learning that the building they were destined for had been demolished. The 16 votes were addressed to the Great Cliffs residential home in Marine Parade, Dawlish. An officer from Teignbridge District Council visited the site on Wednesday to confirm it was demolished. The votes are being withheld until the people they were intended ...

It's the time of reckoning for Dawlish Town tomorrow as they head for Radstock Town in Division One of the Screwfix Direct Western League. Win against their second-placed rivals, and the fifth-placed Sandy Lane club can still dream of returning to the Premier Division at the first attempt. However, anything less and player-manager Chris Myers' side will have too much leeway to make up in their ...

Graffiti blighting the bandstand in the centre of Dawlish has been tackled by Teignbridge Council as part of its spruce up for the summer season. Obscene graffiti had been marker penned on the walls of the bandstand on The Lawn in the centre of Dawlish. Now contractors working for the council have been cleaning it up.

The Dawlish Town re-building programme for next season continued this week ahead of tomorrow's home game with Shepton Mallet in Division One of the Screwfix Direct Western League. With nine games to go, and promotion now wishful thinking, player-manager Chris Myers and recently appointed assistant manager Adam Kerswell have gone back to Kerswell's former side Dartington Sports Club and registered ...

To face reality, visiting is the ideal answer. For that very reason, a year ago, students from Dawlish community college planned to visit the land of many puzzles and back image theories. The purpose of the visit was to meet the people, feel the experience and learn more about Africa, but above all these students wanted to see how they could give help to the needy. Almost a year to the day after ...

A SHY young Iraq veteran has won the first Victoria Cross given to a living soldier since 1969. Private Johnson Beharry, 25, an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Grenada, won his VC for saving the lives of his comrades in two incidents last May and June. Severely wounded in the second, he was given only a 50-50 chance of survival and is still on sick leave from the Princess of Wales's Royals. ...

In another busy weekend for Dawlish swimmers at Tiverton, the latest round of County Championships saw more medal successes, writes Phil Shute. Once more it was the season's brightest newcomer, Rebecca Squire, who was top of the rostrum. Nine year old Squire, having already scooped gold and silver medals this season, set a competition-best time in the 200m butterfly, comfortably winning another ...

A builder has put in new plans for a village suburb-style development on the outskirts of a Devon resort. Black Country Properties shelved a 163-home project for Dawlish 15 months ago after fierce local opposition. Now, it has drawn up a 175-house scheme which includes a foodstore, a medical centre and nursing home, and a range of businesses. It says the development could provide up to 700 full ...

Health Secretary John Reid has been asked to step into a row over minor injury services in south Devon. The Teignbridge Primary Care Trust wants to cut 24-hour services at Dawlish, Bovey Tracey and Ashburton in favour of daytime opening hours. But some locals have mounted a campaign against the move and have written to Dr Reid, asking him to order the suspension of the closure consultation.

Dawlish Town came from a goal down to win 4-1 away to promotion rivals Larkhall Athletic in what was effectively a fresh dawn to their season in Division One of the Screwfix Direct Western League on Saturday, writes Gordon Hines. Not only did former Dartington Sports Club boss Adam Kerswell make his dug-out debut as assistant-manager, but Sandy Lane player-manager Chris Myers introduced new ...

More than 1,400 petition letters have been given to health managers in south Devon in protest at changes to local minor injuries units' opening times. Teignbridge Primary Care Trust wants to cut back 24-hour cover at units in Dawlish, Bovey Tracey and Ashburton to between 8am and 8pm. Teignbridge Council said local people feared the worst about the changes.

The teenage son of a policeman rammed a patrol car in a blind panic after being caught joyriding in his mother's vehicle, a court was told. Learner driver Todd Smith, 18, managed to smash his way out of a cul-de-sac past the police car by narrowly missing an officer who tried to take the ignition keys from his vehicle. But when he abandoned the Vauxhall Astra he was driving and tried to escape on ...

A community project breathing new life into coastal and market towns in South Devon has won a prestigious award. The Market and Coastal Towns initiative, set up in 2000 and led by the South West of England Regional Development Agency and other key partners to encourage the economic, social and environmental regeneration of market towns, was given the award in the "Planning for Sustainable ...

A volunteer treasurer who fleeced a south Devon youth soccer club of £12,000 started an 18-month jail sentence on Saturday. The funds, raised by parents and children, were taken by accountant Anthony Kerr after he joined the club as volunteer treasurer in 2000. The 54-year-old told police that he had been taking money since June 2002. Kerr, of East Cliff Road, Dawlish, admitted obtaining money by ...

A Bideford man with Hollywood-sized ambition is hoping his first foray into films will make movie moguls sit up and take notice. Ray Smith has spent the past year writing the script for a short film and arranging the myriad details which even a modest production requires - in between odd jobs to pay the bills. Now all is ready, and shooting for Blunt - a black comedy in the British gangster genre ...

A leading Tory has defected to the UK Independence Party, and will become the first councillor in Teignbridge to sit as an official member. A former mayor of Dawlish, Cllr Bill Forrow, 43, shocked fellow Conservatives by switching to UKIP because the Tories are not robust over Europe. Cllr Forrow, who was mayor last year, said: "It was a huge wrench and something I had to wrestle with for some ...

As defending East Devon Mini-League champions, Dawlish Swimming Club opened this season's account with a resounding victory on Saturday evening in Paignton. This season's newcomers, Paignton (replacing Totnes), finished the evening in second place, with Newton Abbot, Torquay and Exeter behind them. The evening opened with three first places for Dawlish, setting the scene for the evening, which saw ...

A SOUTH Devon soccer club for youngster was almost brought to the knees by a fiddling treasure who milked thousands of pounds from the club. Read the rest in the Herald Express ! Dawlish United Football club needs sponsors for all ages , this could be a small amount to buy a football, to a large ammout for a team kit.Its a shame the young generation after suffer over someones greed!you can all ...

Firefighters had to force their way into a South Devon nightclub after smoke and flames were seen coming from the second floor of the premises. The alarm at Cools in Teignmouth was raised by a shopper passing the scene in Northumberland Place. Firefighters from the town were joined by crews from Dawlish and Torquay to deal with the incident just after 9am. It is believed the fire in an office had ...

A Convalescent home fined £5,000 two weeks ago after a food-poisoning incident is to close. During a hearing Llandudno Magistrates were told if losses at the Railway Convalescent Home, near Llandudno's West Shore, continued the home could close within seven or eight years. Yesterday however, the home's trustees announced that the home will close early next year. "It has been brought about by a ...

A Lincolnshire railway enthusiast is set to give a new lease of life to a dilapidated trackside signal box at a Devon seaside resort. Justin Rushworth is in talks with Network Rail over a 99-year lease of the 86-year-old box at Dawlish. He hopes that the signal box, which is a listed building, can be opened up to the public to enjoy sweeping views across the Exe estuary.

£16K for a sarnie? Not even the swankiest deep-filled mother from Pret or M&S would set you back that much. But then again, your average BLT doesn't have the Virgin Mary's beatific face in it. So there. And when the free market talks and all that... For some reason alien to all right-thinking people, the Times reports that an online casino company has bought a 10-year-old cheese sandwich, for said ...

"Shop front" police stations could be provided in two Devon seaside towns to give the public easy access to the police. Dawlish and Teignmouth are being discussed as possible locations for the new look stations, which would house local officers and an inquiry officer. The police are considering long terms plans to introduce the shop front stations across the region.

Gale-force winds and heavy showers will continue to lash parts of Britain today with rail, air and ferry services all set to be disrupted. The worst of the weather is again set to hit the South West of England which has already suffered widespread flooding. About 200 rail passengers were stranded for three hours aboard two Virgin trains when they failed after being swamped by sea water at Dawlish, ...

Problems at a Devon NHS trust which treats patients with mental health problems will be debated in the Commons on Monday night. Angela Browning, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton, says the way the trust is being run is affecting patients. It follows claims by Exeter GP Adrian Midgely that patients are not being seen quickly enough and treated. But Devon Partnership NHS Trust insists it is providing ...

A south Devon resort’s tourist information centre has had to close after being hit by vandals. Damage to the facility at Dawlish is estimated to be around £5,000 and it will remain closed until repairs are carried out. Police are appealing for any information about Monday’s incident, in which windows and glass doors were smashed, apparently by rocks taken from a nearby flower bed.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, A Russian rocket carrying a new Russian-U.S. crew to the international space station has lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome. For Russians Salizhan Sharipov and Yuri Shargin and American Leroy Chiao, it was the first mission in a Soyuz spacecraft -- breaking the nearly 30-year tradition of having at least one crewman with previous experience in piloting the capsule. Chiao ...

Council Tax campaigners in Devon are claiming victory after three pensioners appeared in court for non-payment. Newton Abbot magistrates ordered the pensioners to pay Teignbridge District Council what they owe, but did not order them to pay court costs. Campaigners say the ruling, given on Monday, shows that people in authority were listening to their protests. Peter and Margaret Fountain, from ...