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Follow the Brown Signs Blog - September, 2012
This mahoosive project needs a little help from its friends…
September 26, 2012
[caption id="attachment_6496" align="alignleft" width="210" caption="Setting off on the Brown-Signed Trip"][/caption]
So, I've been working on this project of mine to celebrate and map the fantastic array of destinations with brown tourist signs across Britain (and indeed the world) for the last 3 years now. In fact, its exactly 3 years this week when I first headed off in my crap car (which currently sits abandoned on the road outside because I'm pretty sure the clutch has imploded) on a big trip visiting as many brown signed destinations as I could in the space...Read more >>
The Cartoon Museum
September 16, 2012
Today I happened to notice this brown sign for The Cartoon Museum, just around the corner from the British Museum. I'd never been before and you know me, once I've spotted a brown sign I must follow it, so we paid them a visit.
I love finding out how museums began, I find it so interesting when someone (or usually a small group of like-minded individuals) feel strongly that a subject should be bought to the attention of the general public in a place where it can be properly celebrated and...Read more >>
Crap days out? Really?
September 3, 2012
At the ferry terminal yesterday, after a too-enormous-for-any-normal-person-to-consume-without-having-an-immediate-5-minute-wee-afterwards latte, I was on my way back from the toilet and noticed the best seller shelf in W H Smiths. I popped in to have a mooch and delay my return to the half dried coffee spills and yesterday's discarded blueberry muffin that characterised our seating area.
At number 6 was a book called "Crap Days Out". I'd never heard of it before but its clearly doing well enough to get to the heady heights of the top ten in the literary count...Read more >>
Brown signs en France mes petites amies!
September 2, 2012
I'm very excited this morning. I'm excited the way I always get when wake up early because I'm going in holiday (and also a bit anxious because of course I haven't done anything useful like packing or thought about where the hell my passport might be in my pit of a bedroom). I'm a bit more excited about this trip than normal because I'm going to France, not the most exotic of destinations you might be thinking dear reader, but seasoned brown-signers and regular visitors to this site know that France...Read more >>
Rare brown signs: Elusive antiques centre brown sign spotted!
August 28, 2012
Yep, here it is, on the A40 just coming up to Whitney, Oxfordshire. I've been searching for one of these little puppies for ages after I began my chapter on antiques centres for the book. I like finding "rare" symbols like this one, mainly because I'm a massive brown sign spotting nerd but also because I like having real life examples of the places I write about (its why I bankrupt myself driving my car into the ground caining it all around the country to experience them). In fact a...Read more >>
Racehorses, trains and monks cutting shapes on their monastic dance floor
August 26, 2012
Last week I went up to York for some light horse racing action. The Mose has taken very well to working from home as a self-employed photographer and has thus managed to get herself right royally addicted to Channel 4 Racing. The superhorse of the moment and winner-of-everything Frankel was running and The Mose couldn't resist the prospect of seeing him go, yep she was completely wouldn't-bloody-stop-going-on-about-it excited. That racecourse also just so happens to have a brown sign, so I am officially calling this trip research.
The first horse race ever to...Read more >>
Books about fishing and when enough just isn’t enough
August 13, 2012
Today I'm researching the history of fishing for my never-ending exhaustive book about the pursuits one can undertake by following brown tourist signs. This leisure fishing (not fishing for commercial or survival purposes) is referred to by people with sticks ("fishing rods") and maggots ("bait") as "angling". Because I've embarked on an absolutely enormous project with this whole brown signs malarky I've begun to realise that my research reflects virtually every activity of any description that has evolved from the beginning of time - from sleeping to white water rafting and about...Read more >>
Getting lost is woodlands trying to find some art…
August 3, 2012
After my visit to the Long Player project in Trinity Lighthouse a few weeks ago (audiovisual tour of my experience here: Long Player Project) I was inspired by my research of the composer and artist, Jem Finer, to visit another one of his music/art installations which is (quite literally) buried deep in an ancient woodland-come-arts-extravaganza near Challock in Kent.
His piece is called "A Score for a Hole in the Ground" and was inspired by the tranquil sounds of Japanese singing bowls. The installation uses a series of bowls sunk down deep into the...Read more >>
The Alternative Brown Sign Torch Relay comes to an end
July 31, 2012
So on day 64 the Olympic torch entered London, my very own home town (I went along, please see small white torch bearer running through Crystal Palace on left). But in the last few days of the Olympic torch relay it proved more than a little difficult to pick a brown signed destination along the Olympic torch route because, without boring you too much with the nerdy details, brown sign rules change once you're inside the M25, making them far less prevalent here. This means that I've had to think of another...Read more >>
The death throws of the Olympic torch relay – Shipwrecks, community parks and English wine – YUM!
July 24, 2012
We're nearing the end of our mammoth jog around the country with our torches and it's time to take you through the random brown signs along the last leg, let's go...
Day 60 - Brighton to Hastings - The Shipwreck Museum, Hastings.
"At the Shipwreck Museum in Hastings there is a remarkable collection of artefacts and information about ships and shipping. Although our focus is principally on wrecks, we aim to use the artefacts recovered from them as stimulus for insights into the past. Our displays also show how we learn about and understand...Read more >>