BRIDPORT Team Rector the Rev Andrew Evans is hanging up his southern cassock and donning a northern dog collar after serving the town for eight years.

He's going, he said, for personal and professional reasons and having turned 60 this year feels it's 'now or never' to embrace new challenges.

He's accepted a part-time post as vicar to a parish in Preston, Lancashire and that will give him time to continue to train as a counsellor.

Rev Evans said it had been a challenging time for the church in Bridport - particularly with the issue of women in the church - when the national row over women priests spilled over and Father Peter Edwards of St Swithun’s was banned from taking services in any other Bridport church after he refused to welcome any women clergy, and with the issue of homelessness and the increasing need for the food bank..

He said now the issue of women in church was settled locally and a new co-ordinator appointed for the food bank he was leaving the team in a good place.

He said: "It is time for some fresh legs to take the team on after eight years.

"I hit 60 this year so I have a little teacher's pension coming. My new post is half time and the other half of the time, being funded by the pension, I am going back to college to train as a professional counsellor.

"Half time jobs in the church of England are extraordinarily rare so I feel very lucky to have got one."

His desire to be a counsellor has its roots in his former role as a teacher when he was deputy head of house and pastoral deputy head of a comprehensive in a deprived area of Swindon.

"I have always had an affinity for the folks for whom life is particularly challenging.

"There has always been that background of pastoral care so I am hoping this will be a bridge from work into something a little bit more relaxed into retirement in however many years it is before that finally comes."

It might be daunting to move so far leaving his family behind in Bridport but he views it as exciting rather than overwhelming, he says.

"It is going to a challenge. I have never lived up north before, always been a softie southerner so it is going to be a challenge. It is a very different environment, it's more suburban, urban parish, it has some regenerated docklands, student population, so it will be very different.

"It is just a single church and one parish, which again is very rare in the church of England."

It has a focus on social justice, they do work in an open prison, support the local food bank, they have a farmers' market which is unusual for a city and they have a community garden in their church grounds, so there are lots of things that attract me already."

Although he's looking forward to the challenge he will miss the people, the culture - and the quirkiness of Bridport.

"I will miss the lovely, lovely Bridport people. It is an amazing place and I will miss that greatly.

"But at 60 it's very hard to get a new job so it's now or never."

What he won't miss is the heaving pavements full of tourists in the summer or church politics.

The Rev Evans has been ordained for 25 years. His last service will be on July 30.