site: reviews — Microlino, Humphrey the M5 Camel, Huset Longyearbyen (graduate from finds)

2026-07-19 02:03:33 -04:00
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+---
+name: "Humphrey the M5 Camel"
+subtitle: "A homemade carnival float that never left its Somerset field"
+date: 2026-07-19
+category: places
+topics: [travel-and-places, history-and-archives]
+tags: [roadside, england, somerset, sculpture]
+link: "https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/humphrey-the-m5-camel"
+linkText: "atlasobscura.com"
+description: "Built in 1980 from an oil drum and chicken wire for a Bridgwater Young Farmers' carnival float, Humphrey has stood in the same Somerset field beside the M5 ever since — dressed for the seasons, repainted by a BBC Somerset presenter in 2020, and still sent Christmas cards addressed to 'The Camel.'"
+source: "Atlas Obscura"
+fromFind: humphrey-m5-camel
+---
+
+import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
+import hero from './hero.jpg';
+
+<Image src={hero} alt="A pale camel figure built from an oil drum and chicken wire stands in a grassy field beside the M5 motorway barrier in Somerset, seen from a passing car with hedgerows, houses, and hills in the background." />
+
+*Seen from the carriageway: the field beside the M5 between Junctions 23 and 24. Photo by David Smith, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Humphrey_the_camel_by_the_M5_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2497057.jpg) — [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/).*
+
+> A field beside the M5 in Somerset has held the same homemade camel for four decades — an oil drum and chicken wire, built for one 1980 carnival parade, dressed for the seasons ever since and sent Christmas cards addressed simply to "The Camel."
+
+Terry Hooper built Humphrey in 1980 on the farm he and his wife Lorraine kept outside Bridgwater — a one-off entry for the Young Farmers' float in that year's Bridgwater Carnival, the illuminated-procession tradition Somerset is known for. The frame is nothing fancier than an old oil drum shaped over with chicken wire. The carnival ran its course and the float was retired, but the camel stayed put in the field where it had been built, overlooking the northbound M5 between Junctions 23 and 24.
+
+Four decades on, it's still there, on the same Hooper land, visible for a few seconds to anyone driving that stretch of motorway. That's the whole trick: no plaque, no car park, no visitor centre, just a farm-built animal close enough to the carriageway that generations of Somerset commuters grew up using it as a landmark for home. Terry Wogan reportedly namechecked it on his BBC Radio 2 traffic reports — about as close as a homemade camel gets to national fame without ever leaving its field.
+
+The affection shows up as mail. Humphrey gets fan letters, and every December, cards addressed simply to "The Camel" find their way to the Hoopers. He's dressed for the calendar too, in a Christmas hat over the holidays and a sun hat when the weather turns, changes made by hand by whoever's on camel duty that week.
+
+Forty years outdoors wears on chicken wire, and by 2020 Humphrey needed more than a hat. Andy Bennett, a BBC Somerset presenter and member of the local carnival club — the same circuit that built Humphrey in the first place — heard the Hoopers were looking for someone to patch him up and repainted him. It's a small, unpaid, entirely voluntary bit of upkeep, and it's the reason the camel drivers wave at today is still recognisably the one from the float: no artist, no unveiling, no budget, just one family's field and a Young Farmers' entry that never really ended.