Good morning, Wycombe!
I was all set for a productive week now the kids are back at school — then my 4-year-old staged a living room obstacle course that ended in a trip to Stoke Mandeville (and a meeting with Archie, A&E's resident cat). She's absolutely fine, just eating lunch through a straw for a few days and getting through a lot of Bluey. If today's newsletter looks a bit pear-shaped, you know who to blame 😉
It’s a stacked week in Wycombe:
🥳 The Big Bash is back
🥾 Brand new guided walk on Wycombe’s dark history
🥊 Frank Bruno’s in town
Friday 13th November | The Walled Garden
Give up your bed for one night so someone else can keep theirs.
Local charity Wycombe Homeless Connection are calling for people to come Together This Winter by taking on the Big Sleepout and/or joining the Together Festival.
From 6pm the Walled Garden fills with fairy lights and firepits for the free Together Festival, and the Big Sleepout begins — 150 people bedding down in shelters they've built themselves — no tents, no overhead cover, no easy option.
Everything raised goes to local people who are homeless or close to it.
🛌 Big Sleepout, 6pm until 6.30am — £25 for adults, £19 for 12–17s. Build a shelter and spend a night under the sky, getting sponsored to take on this incredibly tough challenge. Breakfast bag, snacks and hot drinks through the night, plus fundraising support. VIP tickets (£50) get covered patio space and a roll-out mattress — 15 places only.
🔥 Together Festival, 6-10pm — free and open to all. Firepits and marshmallows, games, stories, and hot food and drink to buy.
👥 Come alone or with colleagues, friends or family — long night, one firepit, same reason for being there; you won't leave as strangers.
💚 Target: £40,000 — Wycombe Homeless Connection stops people losing their homes, runs the Winter Night Shelter, and helps those already homeless find somewhere safe.
A rent rise, a job loss, a relationship over. Anyone can become homeless. You’ve got one Friday night to spare — spend it making sure nobody here faces it alone.
Editor’s Highlights
📍 The Rye | 📅 Sun 13th Sept, 11am–5pm
Watch Wycombe's own watermill grinding local wheat, with stone-ground flour for sale, and homemade cakes and community stalls in the garden. Free entry.
📍 High Wycombe Cricket Club | 📅 Fri 11th & Sat 12th Sept
The cricket ground goes full festival for the weekend — comedy Friday plus live music, food vendors and bars on Saturday.
📍 Patch | 📅 Tonight, 7.30pm
Headliner Caitriona Dowden tops this month's bill, with opener Jamie Mykaela and host Elliot Wengler warming up the room. Use code PULSE for £3 off.
📍 Bledlow Manor | 🗓️ Fri 11 Sep, 2–4:30pm
A rare chance to explore the private gardens of Lord Carrington's Bledlow Manor and museum, with St Mary's Brass Band providing the soundtrack. In aid of Scannappeal.
Saturday 26th September | Lacey Green Millennium Hall, HP27 0QT
She was born in High Wycombe. You’ve seen her on Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You and Pointless. Now she’s playing at a village hall 15 minutes up the road. And tickets are just £20.
Ria Lina is headlining Speen Helping Hospices’ third annual comedy night — put together and MC’d by Elliot Wengler of Wycombe’s Select Comedy Club.
🎤 Ria Lina — also Mock the Week, Radio 4's The News Quiz, Just a Minute and The Unbelievable Truth
🎭 Plus Chris Norton Walker, Andy Gleeks and Sally Firth
📅 Doors and bar from 7pm, show at 8pm
🚗 15 minutes drive from Wycombe town centre, just past Hughenden — free parking
🎟️ £20, no booking fees
💚 Every penny of profit goes to Helen & Douglas House, Rennie Grove Peace and Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity. SHH have raised over £200,000 for local hospices in 25 years.
A comic of that size in a room that small doesn't come round often.
Wellness Moments
🧘 Yoga Brunch Club
📍 Peterley Manor Farm | 📅 Sun 13th September, 9am
Yoga, meditation and seasonal brunch in the farm's yurt.
🌙 New Moon Rituals
📍 Slohaus Wild Spa | 🗓️ Sun 13 Sep, 3pm
A four-hour journey combining guided fascia release, wood-fired sauna and cold plunge plus refreshments, sound bath and New Moon ritual to close.
No Dig: Sustainable Gardening
📍 Peterley Manor Farm | 🗓️ Sat 12th September, 9am
Fun in the kitchen garden with Sam (ex-Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons) covering composting, bed creation and regenerative growing.
Saturday 19th September
Seven years after his debut album, David Banks has finally made the follow-up — and he's launching it at Bucks Student Union with half the roots scene in tow.
Banks has spent most of his career as the guitarist and producer behind other people's records. On 19th September he plays the new one, All The Dreams We Left Behind, with his long-standing band The Loose Change.
🎤 Opened by Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou, Hannah White & Kieron Marshall, and Pete Gow & Jim Maving
🕖 7pm till 11.30pm, with a late after-party
🍕 Full bar and freshly baked sourdough pizza all night
🎟️ £20 plus booking fee (£22.25 all in)
📍 The Venue, Bucks SU, HP11 2JZ
A Clubhouse Records and Ramblin' Roots Revue night — four acts on a bill like this normally means a trip into London.
🦢 First Friday: did you make it?
Last Friday was the first “First Friday” event we’ve had in Wycombe. A band under the twinkling Guildhall, places to sit and a few things to nose around.
I dropped by with the kids after a long journey back home from the west country. We picked up some nuggets, I found a seat, chatted with some friends who happened to be walking down the High Street, while my girls danced (really quite exuberantly) to the band. It was a nice little crowd — young, old, students, people heading home from work, people heading out for the evening.
And whoever's been working the swan into the wording deserves some sort of feathery medal. Swander about. I mean… 🦢
The next one’s coming on Friday 2nd October, and I wonder if it’ll look any different.
Were you there? Let me know what you made of it — and send me your swan puns while you’re at it. The best ones might end up on a sign…
Council Catch-up
🏛️ High Wycombe Town Committee, Tues 8th September — The minutes aren't out yet so this is my reading of the webcast. Members voted to add the Bucks Local Plan to the agenda, having been told the committee itself can't respond to the consultation because it's part of the council, though individual councillors can. They then passed a resolution asking for the committee's remit to be reviewed as part of the council's forthcoming constitution review. The chairman said the committee's dissatisfaction with how the plan treats High Wycombe would be passed to Cabinet as a recommendation.
The quarterly finance report shows a forecast £154,525 overspend, all of it cemetery work carried over from last year. Officers will report back on the delays.
🎭 What happens to the Wycombe Swan after 2027: The Licence to Occupy contracts for the Swan and Aylesbury Waterside are being retendered. A preliminary market engagement notice published on 15 July sets out an estimated 10-year contract running from 1 September 2027 to 31 August 2037, with the tender itself due out in February 2027. The next step landed on 4 September on the council's Forward Plan. The item recommends a different legal set-up with a decision due in October. It's a Leader Decision, so it won't be taken at a public meeting, and it's marked part exempt, meaning some of it stays private.
📚 The county archives are moving to Wycombe: Buckinghamshire Archives closes in Aylesbury on 1 October and reopens on Denmark Street in spring 2027, above Tesco, alongside the council's new offices. Deposits already stopped on 1 September, and once the doors close you're down to the Virtual Searchroom.
🏏 Cricket club tries again for its "cricket box": HW Cricket Club wants an all-weather “virtual cricket lane” facility at its London Road ground so members can practise through the off-season. An earlier version was refused in July, with the council calling it "unduly prominent and visually intrusive" so it's been moved to a spot the council said would be "less harmful". Still to be decided.
Entertainment
🎪 Mirth, Mystery & Mayhem Cabaret Show
📍 B'Hive | 🗓️ Sat 12th Sept, 8pm
Five acts of music, comedy and magic in one night.
🥊 An Evening with Frank Bruno MBE
📍 Adams Park | 🗓️ Tonight, 7pm
A chance to hear boxing legend Frank Bruno share stories from his career and mental health journey, with an audience Q&A.
💃🏻 Drag Bingo
📍 Bricklayers Arms, Downley | 🗓️ Sat 12th Sept, 9pm
A raucous night hosted by Luna and Eileen Eiffel.
Community Notes
💙 Chairboys Chatty Cafe
📍 Wycombe Museum | 🗓️ Thursdays from 10th Sept, 10am
A weekly drop-in with Wycombe Wanderers Foundation — £1 tea and coffee, board games and a chat, open to anyone who fancies some company.
👕 Kids Clothes’ Bank
📍 CSK Church | 📅 Fri 11th Sept, 10.30–11.30am
Browse pre-loved clothes for ages 0–14, with tea, coffee and toys to entertain the little ones.
👥 Patch Pace Day – Body Doubling
📍 Patch | 🗓️ Tue 15th Sept, 9am
A neurodivergent-friendly drop-in workday using body doubling and visual energy mapping — come and get things done alongside others in a low-pressure space.
🪡 Wycombe Repair Cafe
📍 All Saints Church | 🗓️ Sat 12th Sept, 10am–1pm
Bring along broken items — clothes, electricals, furniture and more — for the volunteer fixers to take a look.
🎳 Silver Series Bowling Social
📍 Eden Shopping Centre | 🗓️ Mon 14 Sep, 11am
A free and fun social morning for older local adults. Limited spaces, RSVP to hello@atomicbee.co.uk for details and to book your place.
📆 Dates for your Diary
🎭 Comedy Night with Andy Kind
📍 St Andrew's Church | 🗓️ Thu 24th Sept
In aid of Growing Hope, the High Wycombe charity giving free therapy — occupational, creative and speech and language — to local children with additional needs.
🤪 Bingo Loco Wycombe
📍 Old Town Hall | 🗓️ Sat 3rd Oct
Boozy bingo with a full DJ set, dance-offs, lip-sync battles and prizes that go well beyond a book of stamps — past winners have won a holiday!
The Wycombe Wordle
Six guesses. Five letters. One Wycombe connection. Let me know if you get it!
🟩 Right letter, right spot
🟨 Right letter, wrong spot
⬜ Not in the word
That’s a wrap for this week’s Pulse!
Have a fantastic weekend — but before you dash…
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See you next Thursday,
Steph
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