For any news related to Southery, this is the page to come to. We're hoping to report on anything that goes on in and around the village that may be of interest to others.

This page welcomes and relies on user submissions so if there is anything relevant that needs to be added then please submit your news here. If it's not getting updated enough it's because I'm not getting enough submissions :-(

Hilgay Raft Race
A fun time was had by all at the Hilgay Raft Race on Sunday 14th July 2013. The weather was over cast and warm to start with but by the time of the last heats the sun was shining on an excited crowd.
My thanks to Holly Landscapes for allowing me to film the races from the vantage point of thier Cherry Picker.

The end of a chapter and the turning of the page in the history of the Old White Bell Southery, took place on Monday 14th May when Mr & Mrs Peter and Nicola Smith handed the keys over to the new keepers.

After 9 years of fancy dress, darts, domino's, football, pool and many more sports (except golf and tennis obviously,) fun days, not so fun days, fund raising, bikes and parties, the last pint was pulled and it was time to call it a day. Everybody wishes you both all the best for the future.

We wish Chip and his family all the best with taking the reigns of the OWB and hope the continuation of a successful village pub.

The bi-annual Fishathon started way back in Feb 2005 and has gone from strength to strength since, raising circa £12000 for local Children's Charities. Now at Fishathon4, Steve is currently organising the next FAT instalment for Scotty's Little Soldiers, a charity that was set up for the benefit of the children of the fallen, when one of his good friends husbands was killed in Afghanistan in 2009.

In order to raise funds, Steve is planning the following events;

1. 48hr Charity Fishing Challenge, 2nd-4th May 2012 at Swangey Lakes, Attleborough
2. Quiz Night at The Old White Bell, Friday 4th May, from 2030hrs
3. Fishathon4 Family Fayre at Southery Playing Field, from 1330hrs
4. 5hr Charity Fishing Match at Dents 2-Island Lake at Hilgay from 0845hr
5. Auction (very popular) at The Old White Bell from 8pm. Click here for the latest auction list

For full details of the events, check out the Fishathon 4 Facebook page by clicking http://www.facebook.com/Fishathon4

All donations, support and assistance would be very gratefully received. Please help us Help Their Children Smile.

Finally the beach theme day arrived and although British weather was as expected, a great day was had by all. The children loved the fairground rides, face painting, pony rides and all the other stalls. With the men flexing their muscles and the ladies, proving they were definitely a match, a very competitive Tug a War ensued. With lots of grunting and yelling the British Sugar team triumphed! Well done to all who entered. The children also had a go!
Then as the evening progressed lots of laughter came from the antics at the surf simulator and everyone danced to the fabulous "Martha's Wood".
Swish would like to thank Jolene Osler and Emma Fowler for the excellent painted faces, Chrissie Reeve and Tommy for great pony rides, Danny Nicholson, Dale Osler and Shane Reeve for all their help with setting up and packing away, Nicholsons machinery and the talented "Martha's Wood". We would also like to thank all who came and supported us, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we all did!
Total profit £363.53. Proceeds will be going to Southery Youth Club, the Village Hall and Swish.

Fat Bloke On A Moped... rides again. (On 'L' plates)

Kevin Ronney and David Fletcher set off on their biggest challenge on Saturday 25th June, the circumnavigation of mainland Great Britain by scooter.

All didn't quite go according to plan, however the route was adheared to, rendezvous points met and only one bike returned...

Read the entire news of the trip, including all the pictures taken by reading the Blog

Follow the latest news of the entire project at the web site;

www.fatblokeonamoped.com

The Friends of Southery School organised this years giant village yard sale to raise money for extra items that the schools Local Education Authority budget does not cover.
For a fee of £5.00 they advertised the event & prepared a village map of the addresses taking part and was available from the school on the day. A limited number of pitches were available at the school for £7.50.
If you had nothing to sell or wanted to have an open garden, donations were gratefully accepted.
Refreshments were available at the school for all bargain hunters.

As his last action as captain of the Old White Bell Pool Team, Skoda organised a pool competition open to all comers.

The competition was a simple knock out tournament which had 16 entrants in all from the Old White Bell and a contingent of players from the Live & Let Live in Downham Market. A cash prize was awarded to Graham the winner and the raffle netted an nice bonus to the £139.00 total raised.

Proceeds will go toward the Fat Bloke On A Moped Project Britain fund for the breast cancer charity Keeping Abreast. Our thanks to everyone who participated and helped out to make this event a success.

The annual Old White Bell Wanderers football presentation evening was an emotional one this year as we said farwell to Peter Smith as the teams manager. As ever though, the presentation of the awards was swept aside pretty quickly to get down to the serious business of getting completely trollied.

(Of course,what everyone eagerly awaited was who had won the coveted "Bit Of An Animal" award, which this year went to Colin Coulsen.)

Friends of Southery School invited you to the School Summer Fete on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 11.00am until 3.00pm at Southery Primary School.

The fun included BBQ, Refreshments, Music, Bouncy Castle, Tombola, Face Painting and many more fun things to do.

We ordered sunny weather, but someone forgot to post the letter.

Following the success of last years Masquerade Ball, Swish decided to host The Glass Slipper Ball.
With an exciting line up of entertainment which included the duet Pride with their cover of all the popular tracks from the 60's to the current chart toppers and performing this year was the jaw dropping vocals of Robert Farrel. Leading us all late into the night was the dance floor filling sounds of KJ Entertainments, complete with their very own Dan the balloon man!!
Doors opened at 7.30pm with a champagne reception and canapés served by Southery's very own Nigel Bird
Our resident photographer Dave was on hand to take those memorable portrait pictures with a little makeshift studio in the corner.
Our thanks to everyone who came along and made it a special evening.

Pics from the ball are £5 each. Our thanks to Mr Bee for this special Swish price.

Make a note of the number of the pictures you would like (for example, the first picture number is 6869) and then email me on david@southery.com with your order.
NB: All photographs are reduced in quality due to space restraints of this web site.

Bingo night was in aid of funds for the 2012 Carnival.

We're hoping to make the 2012 Carnival the best seen in Southery for a very long time, so please come along to the future Bingo nights to help support your local community.

Money raised at this Bingo event;

£119.00

You only get away with turning 40 a few times in your life and this was the first time for Pete Smith, landlord at the Old White Bell.

To celebrate in style Pete and Nic held a Movie Star theme fancy dress party. The turn out was really good and the conversations ensued of trying to work out who was who. There were duplicates of Scooby Doo but worst by far were five lasses who all came as 'Pink Ladies' from Grease! What were the chances of that?

By far the best outfit was mine, but I can't remember who I was.

Click the image above to the right to be taken to the gallery and if you use any of my pics on Facebook or where ever else, just remember that I'm about to ride around the circumference of Gt. Britain on a scooter for charity and your generosity sponsoring me will be greatly appreciated ;-)

Once again a great turnout of bingo players flocked through the doors. Our bingo caller, Spike shouted Kelly's eye, the Brighton line, two little ducks and many more whilst surprising all with a Norwich City commentary!
1 line, 2 lines and full house were played on all 10 games and both half time flyers.
A break at half time gave way to Charlene's home made cakes & refreshments. The raffle and tombola were popular and proved to be a success. Our free Swish flyer donated to all players was to win:
1L – 2 free hotdogs/burgers at the Swish Beach Theme Nite
2L – 2 free coach seats on the Swish Summer Coast Trip
FH – 2 free tickets to the Swish Glass Slipper Ball.
Thankyou to all that donated prizes and anyone who supported this event. An amount of £257.38 was raised. Proceeds will be going to St Mary's Church, The Methodist Church and Swish.

Full details on the Swish page

And they’re off…… our first event of the year was race night, where we haf a great turn out whereby you could have a flutter, enjoy the atmosphere of an exciting time at the races - all no further than your local. There were 8 races, with options of betting on some or all of the races and the chance of winning a cash prize or you could choose to place a bet on a triple or dual forecast before the event. The top prize of £100.00 was won by John Clemments.

Swish would like to thank all those who supported Race night, a good time was had by one and all and a fantastic £436.00 was raised.

Thanks every one!

• Holiday activities for young people
• Rural transport scheme
• West Norfolk Inter village games
• Information provider
• Attending village meetings of parish Council/ Youth Council
• Loan of equipment scheme
• New village activities for residents generally

On the 7th and 8th of December Father Christmas visited the good children of southery.

He arrived with his elves and helpers on his tractor and trailer to deliver gifts to them, which were donated by Swish.

The smiles on their faces were a joy to see and warmed up the cold night air. A great start to the years festivities and santa has promised to return next year providing the children are good.

It finally arrived, after much excitement and nervousness our eight contestants finally got to show their talent, and what magnificent talent they all had!

First Prize: £100

For photographs and video footage shot on the night, please visit the Swish page of the web site by clicking here

Trundling into the village bright and early at the crack of 12.26pm on Sunday 1st August, Billy Pope and his friends certainly rose any late risers with the noise and sight of his very bright vintage tractor and entourage in tow (although not literally 'in tow')

Raising some money for the Diabetes Organisation, Southery was just one of the villages visited, stopping traffic in Hilgay, Dents Farm Shop and Denver to name but a few.

For most of the last home teams football season the OWBFC have been having to play their home matches at River Lane Sports Field in King's Lynn due to the Southery football pitch developing a problem with moles. The moles now seem to have burrowed off into a different direction now so a team of volunteers set about repairing the damage caused by the little blighters.

A heart felt thanks to all those involved.

Photo courtesy of a local that heard it was 'Diet Coke Break' time for the work force. Boy was she disappointed.

On Sunday 2nd May a group of ladies wearing tutu’s, boppers, fairy wings, feather boas and pink earmuffs set off from the Old White Bell to Norwich. We had a very energetic warm up with the “Nivea Men” and then set off on a 5K run/walk/drag around Norfolk Showground. We all managed to finish the course with Hayley finishing in the fastest time of 33 minutes! Everybody done really well, especially the girls, Megan, Jodie and Carla (well done girls!). We decided to run for Claire and it was an honour to do so. We raised a fantastic £800 for Cancer Research UK. We had a great day and had loads of fun!

We are hoping to do it as a yearly event, any mad ladies out there who would like to join us? The more the merrier!!

On Friday 12th March at 5pm, in icy cold weather Southery Guides pitched their tents near the Guernsey Goats at the rare breeds farm. The girls slept in one tent and were toasty warm all night despite the rain and wind. We had a supper of Pizza, not cooked by the Guides but delivered from the local Pizza shop! (Guiding in the 00's - how things have changed!) But in the morning we had to be up and ready by 7.30 to meet Jill the shepherd, who was absolutely fantastic!. The girls only expected a tour of the animals and started with the pigs, as they make the most noise, however when they got there the sheep and the new born lambs, they had to do the feeding, as instructed by Jill, depending upon the breed, they got one or one and half scoops of food, followed by hay. After feeding the sheep, they then went with Jill to the dairy to prepare milk for the calves and timed how long it took them to drink 2 litres of milk each. All were surprised that it only took 35 seconds for Jet, the female to guzzle her breakfast down! More breakfasts were then fed to the goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, horses and finally the Guides themselves! We all appreciate how hard these people work.

All the girls earned their Animal Active badge and Go For It - Well done girls!!

Next day out is to the Eco Centre at Swaffham and next sleepover is at Denver Mill.

Anyone interested in becoming a Guide please contact Anita on the info above