Follow the brown signs
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Follow the Brown Signs Blog - May, 2014
Great driving roads of the UK (many with brown signs FYI)
May 27, 2014
Yesterday I was interviewed on a BBC wireless show. The subject was the great driving roads of Britain and the art of getting out and engaging in the world around you, doing some discovering for discovering's sake and you can hear my interview here :)
listen to ‘Follow the Brown Signs Mark Forrest show’ on Audioboo(function() { var po = document.createElement("script"); po.type = "text/javascript"; po.async = true; po.src = "https://d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net/cdn/embed.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();...Read more >>
Traffic Sign Regulations and General Directions 2015 news – WOOF!
May 17, 2014
I first started this big old brown sign project of mine to celebrate the fantasticly varied and endlessly fascinating destinations across Britain that can be found simply by following a brown tourist sign, unsurprisingly then my project has immersed me in the vibrant heritage and cultural scene, but I have also often found myself immersed in the seemingly less exciting world of road regulations, traffic sign design and "roadside furniture" management. As everyone knows though I'm a massive nerd, just give me a paragraph to read on any subject, from...Read more >>
Tour de France Grand Depart – like the Tour de France but with some Yorkshire in it
May 7, 2014
This year the Tour de France will begin in Yorkshire. My dad's been obsessed with sweaty men in lycra puffing their way up French mountains (or "Alps" if you will) for as long as I can remember so I pricked up my little ears when the news was announced last year. I'll admit to snoring off however when I was told that my '90s favourite, Miguel Indurain, wouldn't be making an appearance. Apparently he's too old, which was distressing because he was about the only thing that got me through those...Read more >>
Dr Jenner: Destroyer of the small but deadly pox
April 22, 2014
Reader, I've moved. At the end of February we swapped an expensive chicken coop of a flat and the often terrifying (for an introvert like me at least) streets of South London for a small cottage on a farm in deepest darkest Gloucestershire. It's deliberately out of the way. My property search involved identifying the biggest areas of white on the road map (where there is nothing) and waiting stubbornly until a rentable property came up therein. Very frustrating for my other half I could tell but when I played the...Read more >>
Sky high nausea in 9th century aviation technology
September 18, 2013
For my birthday this year my boyfriend gave me a days gliding course at the London Gliding Club. I was both touched that he'd got me such a cool non-boring present and scared stupid that I'd soon have to ascend into the skies in a craft with no engine, kept aloft purely by naturally occurring thermals under some very thin wings.
I have a love/hate relationship with things that push me out of my comfort zone and I do stuff that scares me a lot. I get a ridiculous idea in...Read more >>
In the ruins of Bayham Old Abbey
August 14, 2013
Recently English Heritage sent me a big spreadsheet containing all their 400(ish) properties in it for me to upload onto my brown sign map of the UK. In order to prevent a brain meltdown I didn't even open the file (best to ignore big data sets in case I break them I find) and sent it straight to my web developer Olly, who had the opposite of a brain meltdown (I think he even said "cool" upon receipt) then cracked right on with uploading it onto my website. You can...Read more >>
Me on BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live
On Saturday I had the honour of being on Saturday Live on Radio 4. Over the years I've been mildly hesitant to get what I do into the media, mainly because I feel a bit shy about it but also because when I've tried in the past it often came to nothing and made me feel a bit crap. In order to keep myself sane and not get too despondent when receiving knock backs I kept going quietly on my own without shouting very much about it. However, recently the...Read more >>
Travels with my barman
July 13, 2013
Last week, after months of working nearly every night, double shifts at weekends and doing my part-time 9-5 as well, I was yearning for the sweet relief of a light adventure. Amanda Hone does not like feeling fenced in, so I was browsing Twitter for some inspiration on where to spend my day off when I saw the best museum advertising ever posted on YouTube for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where a flashmob act out Rembrandt's famous Nightwatch in a Dutch shopping centre....
I'd watched the BBC4 documentary in April...Read more >>
Visit Churches (.org.uk)
July 3, 2013
Recently I was contacted by a very nice chap at the Churches Conservation Trust, this organisation does exactly what you think it does, helps to maintain hundreds of churches in need of restoration and conservation around England. He told me he'd recently been driving to a meeting in Suffolk and discovered a "gorgeous hidden gem" of church by following a little brown tourist sign. As a total history geek obsessed by all things old I too especially like following a brown sign to a church. Here's a picture of one...Read more >>
Post proposal brown signing on the Isle of Wight
May 27, 2013
When I awoke on my first morning as a soon-to-be-married woman I was both excited about being engaged (I had to keep checking I still had a ring on my finger) and almost equally as excited about the Visit England Breakfast Award accredited breakfast that awaited me just sniffing distance away in The Fawley's breakfast room. Like I said, I do like bacon. It's become a bit of a thing for me now to check whether the place I'm staying at shows this small but extremely significant sticker in its window when...Read more >>