Good week or Bad Week? The winners and losers in Devon’s news

GOOD WEEK

U turn on U bends: Exeter City Council has backed down on its plan to close 10 public toilets in the city. The proposals, which would have saved the council around £60,000, met with widespread disapproval throughout the city. The council is now looking at a “community toilet scheme”.

Back to the future: Bideford’s regeneration is to focus on a major archaeological dig in the town – the first part will take place in the Chopes department store car park followed by a larger dig at the neighbouring Torridge District Council car park.

Viral Torbay: A five-minute We Love Our Geopark film is planned to be released next month, and the organisers are already calling for it to go ‘viral’. The film ‘traces the unique geology of the area from the formation of the planet 400 million years ago and how our rocks have driven and guided the industries and jobs created in the area and our relationship with the local environment’. And is aimed to highlight UNESCO’s first Urban Global Geopark – the English Riviera Geopark.

BAD WEEK

Orphan seal: A baby seal was found washed up at Ilfracombe Harbour. The mother couldn’t be found, and because the pup was so young and weak the vet and the British Diverrs Marine Life Rescue medics decided to feed it for a month until it was strong enough to release it back into familiar waters

Return to sender: Letters from 1976 have been delivered to the Newton Abbot address, but no one knows the people they are meant for. The letters are addressed to Mr and Mrs Hards, marked ‘Rapido’, had a Spanish post mark and look to be written by a man on holiday in Paris to his sister and parents.

Social tonic: Buckfast Monks have been on the defensive over the their Buckfast Tonic Wine, which Strathclyde Police said was mentioned 5,638 crime reports from 2006 to 2009. In the face of calls for the drink to be banned by Catherine Stihler, a Scottish Labour MEP, the monks said: “It is hard to see how one product with only a small percentage of the market can be held responsible for all the social ills of such an area.”

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