Follow the brown signs

Follow the Brown Signs Blog - April, 2011

The nerve centre of The British Empire in a quiet little Cornish cove. Who knew?

April 10, 2011

This is the sign at the bottom of the Minack Theatre hill. I'd never heard of the Telegraph Museum so I was intrigued, and when I'm intrigued I must discover. We'd passed a big white building on the way to the Minack with MUSEUM printed in massive letters on it so I guessed that was it.

After parking up you walk through a garden full of "sci-art" sculptures which were born out of an interesting collaborative project that aims to bridge the age old divide between the art world...

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England’s most westerly point and a single-handed open air theatre builder

April 7, 2011

At 1am on Monday morning I was in my old pal Chris' sitting room in Plymouth after a non-stop 4.5 hour belt down the motorway straight from work. We'd spontaneously decided I'd visit and go brown-signing around the South-West after The Minack Theatre signed up to www.thebrownsignway.com. I was hell-bent on paying them a visit after reading what they had to say about themselves: "The Minack is the UK's only cliffside open-air theatre, created by Rowena Cade in the 1930s, we're now hosting an 18 week summer season of...

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Random Brown Sign of the Day – The Darlington Brick Train

March 31, 2011

Exactly what it says on the tin: a massive train made from bricks just on the outskirts of Darlington, or more precisely "situated next to Morrisons on Morton Park Industrial Estate" it's location is rather depressingly described on thisisdarlington.com tourist information website.

Interesting when you learn a little more about it though so here's a little about what they have to say:

The sculpture was built in 1997, designed by David Mach, to celebrate the rich railway heritage of Darlington. The adventurous can climb to the platform...

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Random Brown Sign of The Day – The World of Model Railways

March 30, 2011

Today's brown sign of the day is The World of Model Railways in Mevagissey, Cornwall. I knew I'd love it even before I'd had a butcher's at their website but all the pictures and descriptions of this little attractions only compounded my love for them even more. When answering the question "Why is your attraction important and why would Britain be worse of without you?" on the form on my website they said this:

"We are almost unique in Britain, one of very...

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Random Brown Sign of the Day – The Kingcombe Centre

March 29, 2011

I'm getting so many unique and amazing attractions signing up to The Brown Sign Way through the "I'm a brown-signed attraction, get me involved!" page on my website that I think it's time they were shared, so in their honour I'll pick one randomly every day and feature it in my new daily post called "Random Brown Sign of the Day". It won't be a normal blog about me doing a brown sign visit, it'll be more about how surprising and interesting these places are when...

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Day 2 of Matt and Amanda go brown-signing: Visit to a reptile zoo at the deceptively named Beaver Water World

March 22, 2011

Matt and I decided that another brown sign trip was in order after the mildly disappointing day we'd spent wasting petrol driving around South West London/Surrey, being turned away from Hampton Court Palace and getting stuck in traffic jams that made us go a bit mental. As an ode to our "Henry VIII says no" day we took this picture of us eating our packed lunch in the car, kindly bought by Matt from the petrol station consisting of Ribena, donuts, Revels and Wine Gums (both big bags) which we...

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My very random phone conversation with a chap at the London Development Agency just now…

March 17, 2011

Me: *Sounding very serious and worky* I would like to hire an intern/work experience person to help with a project I'm currently undertaking and wondered if you might be able to assist me?
Man: OK, I'll just get some details, can you describe the project for me?
Me: Yes of course... *blah blah usual stuff about brown signs etc*
Man: Can I just stop you there, do you have a twin?
Me: Err yes I do, do you know her?
Man: Well not really, but I did...

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King Henry VIII’s computer says "NO"

March 14, 2011

Luckily for me my best friend Beaker's brother Matt, who works abroad, has been back in the country for the last week. This is great for me because it means I get some variety in the person sitting next to me on my brown signing trips. People who don't have proper 9-5 jobs or children suit my needs brilliantly. Score. Matt's known me for a long time and was therefore totally unphased by my suggestion that we should get in the car and drive in a random direction to discover...

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An actual Living Rainforest in the middle of the Berkshire countryside?! Strange, but believe it people, it’s true…

March 8, 2011

This weekend I went away with my uni gang to the Cotswolds. My friend Kat (far left) moves to Singapore for an indefinite period soon and we all needed a weekend away slopping around in our pyjamas 'til noon, pootling in picturesque villages buying things we didn't really need, breaking casserole dishes we found in the cottage and eating massive pies in country pubs (accompanied by lots of wine) to make us all feel like we'd spent some quality time together before she left.

Now that the Brown Sign...

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Mission: Explore via The Brown Sign Way. Geography is COOL man…

March 2, 2011

I was very excited to be tweeted at the other day by a cool bunch of geographers (they exist, I promise you) called The Geography Collective who launched a great website last year called Mission: Explore. They have an affiliated iPhone app and now 2 books that are packed full of missions for kids to do. They aim to get children noticing the world around them and engaging with their surroundings by completing lots of fun and diverse exercises. They're designed to get kids actually doing and thinking for themselves,...

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