All posts relating to arts, culture and heritage, explored while travelling
Autumn is my favourite season of the year for lots of reasons. The heat of the summer is over and the long cold nights haven’t drawn in yet either. It’s one of the shoulder seasons for travelling which means lower prices and quieter tourist areas (always a bonus!) However, my main reason is the fact the trees turn…
It may shock all my regular readers to know that Elmer’s Big Parade Suffolk was only my first sculpture trail of 2019. How did I get to summer’s end and only do one trail? There have been so many good ones this year, many of which have just come to an end after their summer adventures. However, with…
It is hard to comprehend what seeing 100,000 knives in one place would look like and with the best will in the world, I’m not sure anyone could have imagined the Knife Angel would be the result. When I knew the Knife Angel sculpture was going to be in my local city of Liverpool, I knew I had…
Oh 2019, you came around so quickly… I don’t know where the end of 2018 disappeared to and now its half way through January! It does mean one thing however: it’s time to look back at what I’ve been up to throughout the year. This time last year I wrote about my Top…
I recently had the pleasure of dining at Barristers Restaurant at The Courthouse in Knutsford after been invited along to try out the new winter’s menu. Being December, it was a fabulously festive treat without being another Christmas dinner. The food was delicious and the setting luxurious. Disclaimer: I was invited to review the new winter’s menu and…
This is what happens when you give a team of ice sculptors 4 months and 4000 litres of water to play with…or maybe you can visualise it better in terms of tonnes of ice: over 250 of them! The Manchester Ice Cavern is part of Britain’s very first dedicated Ice Village. It opened in November 2018…
Autumn is definitely here to stay – the fleeces, scarves and boots are out and the heating is set to come on for when we wake up (yes, I’ve finally done that for the first time since April!) But while I’m planning autumnal walks amongst crisp fallen leaves while collecting conkers, I’m taking a look…
As the Worcester Stands Tall giraffe sculpture trail enters its final weekend of a 10 week run in the UK city of Worcester, I look back on how exciting my trip exploring the trail and the area was. Without a doubt, the greatest joy about these kinds of sculpture trails for me is how they introduce you to a city…
Sculpture trail season has started in earnest with birds and animals flooding in to various cities around the UK like Noah’s animals to the ark. July has seen penguins take to the streets of Dundee, giraffes to Worcester, hares to Norwich, bees to Manchester, owls to Bath and Wallace and Gromit characters to Bristol. But if you’re going…
It’s taken me 7 years of regularly visiting the North East of England to finally visit Penshaw Monument. It’s situated high on a hill overlooking the city of Sunderland in the county of Tyne & Wear. From my usual base in Hartlepool where I have family, I regularly explore County Durham. I’ve seen Penshaw Monument from…
The phrase “You Learn Something New Every Day” springs to mind when I think of my trip to the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston. But actually it was more like ‘many things’! Who knew Preston was the birthplace of the UK’s motorway network? The creator of teetotalism? Home to the tallest church in England that…
May 2018 has seen an extraordinary group of residents fly in to Ironbridge to take up perch. This World Heritage landscape in Shropshire has become a little more colourful with the arrival of the Let’s Go Quackers sculpture trail – a flock of 10 oversized ducks sporting vibrant and jazzy plumage. Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face, this…