No. 214Wednesday7 October2026
The Port Avery Courier

The Port Avery Courier · City · No. 214

Beaches

Morning swimmers ask for a lifeguard at Fiveways

Two hundred people swim off Fiveways now. Not all of them know about the tide.

The sea swimmers who meet at Fiveways beach every morning at seven, whatever the weather, have asked the council for a lifeguard during the summer holidays.

The group started with four people and now has more than two hundred members, about sixty of whom swim on a normal weekday. Its organiser, Maggie Thorne, says the beach has become busy with families who have seen the swimmers and followed them in, "without always noticing that the tide comes round the point like a train".

The council says a seasonal lifeguard would cost about £22,000 a year and that it will look at the request in the spring budget.

Port Avery is an invented town. Its people, stories and places are made up to show this template working, and every picture, photographs and drawings alike, is AI-generated. Replace them all with your own.

-30-

Also in this edition

The pears on the Kestrel estate. Take what you can carry. AI-generated

Neighbourhoods

The orchard nobody planted

Nobody on the Kestrel estate remembers who planted the pear trees, because nobody did. They were nursery stock, left in the ground when the Hollins nursery closed in 1987 and the land was forgotten. The trees grew anyway. For years their fruit fell and rotted in the long grass. Then, four autumns ago, a retired teacher called Win Abbott put up a ladder and a hand-written sign: Take what you can carry. This year the street picked more than a tonne.

Continued on p. 5 →

Money

Your water bill, explained line by line

The new water bills arrived across Port Avery this week, and the phone lines at the utility’s office have been busy since. The total has risen by about nine percent for a typical household, but most of the rise sits in a single line. The standing charge, which every home pays whatever it uses, went up by a fifth. The utility says the money goes to replacing the Victorian mains under the old town, where a burst pipe flooded Wren Square last winter. Three numbers are worth checking: the meter reading, which is sometimes estimated; the number of people the bill assumes live in your home; and the sewerage line, which you can reduce if your roof water runs into your garden rather than the drain.

Continued on p. 4 →

Families

Half-term: twelve things to do that cost nothing

Half-term starts on Friday. Here are twelve things to do in Port Avery that cost nothing, tested by the Courier's own children, who were not asked. 1. Count the bubbles. The Merrow Field Station runs a free family morning at the lake on Saturday: nets, trays and a microscope that shows what lives in a drop of marsh water. 2. Ride the ferry and back. Under-twelves travel at no charge with an adult, and the view of the harbour from halfway across is the best in town. 3. The library's Monday matinee. A film, a carpet and no talking, at two. 4. The tram depot. The volunteers restoring Tram 11 let visitors watch on Wednesday afternoons, and will explain the brakes at length. 5. Rock pools at Gull Point, two hours either side of low tide. Put the rocks back the way you found them. The other seven, from the climbing wall's free taster hour to the bakery on Mill…

Continued on p. 9 →