In 2003 it became clear that Exmoor would suffer without broadband and that some communities, such as Luxborough, would be too far from a BT exchange to receive ADSL even when it became available.

So Colin and Penny began their research and discovered a supplier who would bring high-speed symmetrical broadband (that's faster than BT !) to Croydon Hill via Taunton and the Surf Telecoms mast at Elworthy. It meant digging a trench across 3 fields - 600 metres - laying armoured power cable and then threading 600 metres of delicate optic fibre cable through land drainage pipe.

You can see from the pictures that it was a community job - without Brian & Malcolm Scott's goodwill and work the job would never have been done.

Colin and Penny finally got their broadband in July 2004 and set about wirelessly-enabling the hamlet of Churchtown. About 8 businesses and households were connected - before the disaster happened - the supplier went bust and we were all back to dial-up !

Within 5 days we managed to get a satellite system - not as good, given the inherent delay of satellite communication, but hey, it beat dial-up.

The next stage was a big jump - about 2km across the valley to Langham Farm which entailed an aerial on a scaffold pole, digging under the farm track (thanks to Dave Powell and Pat McGlynn for that). Then through a wood, up a telegraph pole and into the farmhouse. From there it was over the stables and onto another scaffold pole to beam the signal down to the hamlet of Kingsbridge.

That set up another relay point but to enable the hamlet it was necessary to dig another 100 metres across the garden and into Graham's sheep field. So in August 2005 we had 2 hamlets enabled - including The Royal Oak pub and a total of over 20 users.

In March 2006 the last hamlet decided to join the new century and Pooltown was enabled via Pool House. You can see Parish Chairman, Bob Cooksley putting up his own aerial - he's a dab hand up a ladder is Bob !

And now with 2 recent recruits - Sue & Gordon Whalley in Churchtown and Luke & Beck Scriven at Tarr Water we have 28 businesses and households all using high-speed always-on broadband. Well, not quite - the odd cow and deer have interrupted the supply from time to time and we need to get a vegetation-hacking party going before spring takes off. But we're a pretty happy bunch of villagers busy working, shopping and enjoying the wonders of the world-wide web.