Part of a series of posts trying to catch up with all the things I’ve failed to talk about in the latter half of the year. It’s well documented that Heather and I like a good art trail around a city (such as those produced by Wild In Art), so it should be no surprise we managed a total of four this year, actually completing a couple of them.

London Morphs

The first trail actually took us several days to complete, off and on, but each was enjoyable. Morph’s Adventure London took us from around the city itself (with a bit of a detour to Paddington), up to outlying regions of Spitalfields and across the river to the south bank. It culminated in a visit to the never visited before Guildhall Art Gallery, which was itself very interesting (it has the remains of a Roman amphitheatre in the basement much to Heather’s delight). We actually completed this one (over the three days), which is, I think—barring really small trails—a first.

Loads more pictures

Shaun On The Tyne

Back up north in the home town of Newcastle, there were a load of Shaun The Sheep to find. Again, that took several days, and even then a few of them were too far to reach (particularly while relying on public transport). We did get to explore places I haven’t been in years though, and Heather had never been before at all (good to know I can still surprise her with a thing or two). We got the Metro out as far as the airport, and then on to the likes of Gosforth. I also got the chance to introduce her to Exhibition Park, and—probably the highlight of our wandering around—Jesmond Dene complete with Pet’s Corner. We also got to wander down the Ouseburn valley, including some of the excellent pubs around there. Oh, and Gem joined us for some of it, when she could manage to get out of bed, and we got to see the cats.

Again, more photos from the trip

Giraffes In Croydon

I used to live near Croydon so it was interesting to go and revisit, in pursuit of a bunch of giraffes. This was actually quite a well put together trail, in that one could start at one “end” of Croydon and wander across the town to the other picking up the giraffes along the way. It took us the whole of a day but did become the second trail completed. We even got to wander around the strange “new” bits behind East Croydon station which weren’t there last time I was. And visit the Green Dragon of course.

More photographs

More Shauns

The final trail of the year saw a nice little trip down to the coast, at Brighton for more Shaun The Sheep. Again this was just too widely spread to manage all of it but we did get to visit areas unfamiliar, including a lovely wander around Hove. Other highlights included the Brighton Toy Museum (actually slightly disappointing to be honest), and a return to the great double level crazy golf course by the sea.

Final set of photos