Five stories from the South you may have missed

Whales, an upside-down horse and a film director – they are all among this week’s most popular reads.

We have picked five stories from the past seven days across Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, Berkshire and Oxfordshire to keep you up to date.

A close encounter with a whale in the middle of the Atlantic was captured on video by a team of rowers.

It happened as Will Towning from Norwich, Greg and Elliot Collins, from Buckinghamshire, and Chris Betts from Dorset, reached the midway point of their 3,000-mile (4,800km) World’s Toughest Row adventure.

They were surrounded by about five whales surfacing and diving alongside them, with the footage showing one of the mammals coming close to the side of the boat.

The men said they had feared the vessel could be struck, with Elliot Collins calling it “the most surreal moment” of his life.

Get Carter and Flash Gordon director Mike Hodges “felt very forgotten” and was frustrated that he could not get another film made, a new book will reveal.

I’ll Settle For Nothingness: Conversations with Mike Hodges by Oxford filmmaker Jon Spira compiles several years of unseen interviews.

According to Spira, who hopes to finish and release Hodges’ final unfinished film, when he approached him with his idea for the book, his response was: “I fear my name counts for little.”

“He’s one of those directors who people who really love film know the name, but he was not a public figure,” Spira says about Hodges, who died at his home in Dorset in 2022, aged 90.

A long-standing supporter of a hospice has raised £13,300 after he put his passion for photography to good use by producing a nature and wildlife calendar.

Phil Laybourne, whose wife Gail received palliative care at Maidenhead’s Thames Hospice in 2020, created the calendar with a mixture of landscape and animal photos he took locally.

He also gave a series of talks about the images at events run by retirement living provider Pegasus Homes, which sponsored his work. It comes after an earlier calendar he produced in 2021 collected £10,000 for the hospice.

Steph Peters, the hospice’s head of marketing and communications, said Laybourne’s commitment to help the facility was “truly extraordinary”.

One-hundred trees and 200m (656ft) of nature-friendly hedgerow will be planted on the Isle of Wight after the local authority received funding.

Isle of Wight Council successfully secured grant support from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs through the Tree Council’s Trees Outside Woodland Fund.

The trees and hedgerows will be planted predominantly in The Bay area.

Tony Gillingham, tree officer at the Isle of Wight Council, said: “As part of the council’s commitment to enhancing biodiversity, this is a significant win.”

A horse has been rescued by firefighters after being found upside-down in a ditch.

Fire crews were called at 14:00 GMT last Sunday to land near Totton, Hampshire, where Ghara, a 20-year-old mare, was trapped.

They worked for several hours to free the 17-hand-tall (1.73m) animal using a digger and strops.

On Monday, the horse “appeared no worse for her ordeal” in a photo from her owner, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (HIWFRS) said.