Crystal Palace Park

As Steve mentioned in the last post, we have been super busy recently and haven’t had much time to update our blog, mainly because we have been having far too much fun! So get ready for lots of blog posts updating you on the last couple of weeks!

This blog post is going to be all about how much we love Crystal Palace Park! (No, I'm not talking about Crystal Palace's football ground, Selhurst Park, although this seems to be a common misunderstanding amongst people we have been talking to about it!).

Crystal Palace Park is somewhere I had wanted to go for a while. One of my friends had recommended it to me and we were not disappointed. This park has it all! The park was built in the Victorian era for cultural and sporting events and those Victorians certainly knew how to build a park. It used to be home to the actual Crystal Palace, which housed the Great Exhibition (which you may have learnt about at school). However this beautiful building was sadly burnt down in 1936. The only thing that remains of the Palace now is the large number of steps leading up to where the palace once stood. According to the internet a Chinese billionaire is planning on rebuilding the whole palace exactly how it was. I’m not 100% sure how true this is but I hope it does happen!

Anyway, the palace isn’t the only thing the Victorians built in this park; they did like to do things in style. There still remains a fantastic maze, which is probably one of the best mazes I have ever been in, even better than the one at Hampton Court. We did worry at one point that we would be lost in the maze forever, as we spent about fifteen minutes walking around in circles. It really is great fun, and even better, it’s completely free!

Then lastly and probably my favorite thing about the park was the dinosaurs. Not your normal dinosaurs, no! Victorian interpretations of what they thought dinosaurs might look like. They were made by the sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins who completed them in 1854, to show off the then newly discovered dinosaurs and other extinct animals in the park. The dinosaurs don’t really look that much like what we would imagine them to look like now. They actually look more like giant lizards, which we thought made it even better.

Overall, Crystal Palace Park is a fantastic day out and if you live around London you should most certainly go. Along with all the exciting things I have mentioned above, the whole park is lovely if you just fancy a nice walk in the sunshine.

Liz

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Wool House

We spent this past weekend in London, enjoying all kinds of capital city fun. The main reason for us venturing down to London was because Grimsby Town had somehow managed to get into the FA Trophy Final and were playing Wrexham at Wembley (Spoiler alert: they lost). However, as excited as Steve was to go and see the football, I couldn't find it in me to go and sit in the cold and snow for 90 minutes. 

I made my own plans instead, which meant that I got to spend the whole of Sunday with two of my favourite people, Sarah and Toby, who live in that London. We decided to go and see the Wool House exhibition at Somerset House. The Wool House is part of the Campaign for Wool, which aims to promote real wool as the superior natural and sustainable fibre for fashion, interior and the environment. 

The exhibition was set out as a collection of very different themed rooms from a house, with the common aspect of using as much wool as possible. Different designers had been allocated their own room and brief. My favourite room in the exhibition would have to be the Nursery by Donna Wilson, but that was to be expected as I am completely in love with all of her work and would love to have a house full of Donna Wilson products! My favourite pieces in the room would have to be the large knitted cloud and rain drops hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room because I am into all things cloud related at the moment. 

My close second favourite room would have to be the Natural Room by Josephine Ryan, who is an antique dealer, interior designer and writer. This room had shelves full of the most beautiful woollen throws and blankets made from all different kinds of wool. There was an awful lot detail to see and she had clearly showcased a wide range of woollen products that normal people could own! It was all very inspiring.

Along with the interiors of the rooms, there was also an area in the exhibition to highlight the use of wool in fashion, showcasing the Savile Row Bespoke Association, who aim to protect and develop Savile Row's reputation for being the home of the best bespoke tailoring. In this area there was work from Dashing Tweeds, one of my favourite weave companies, who use a whole range of British mills and workshops to produce high quality woven stuff.

The whole exhibition was fantastic and it really showcased the brilliance of wool and how it can be used in so many ways. I am a firm believer that you can’t beat good quality woollen products and I hope everyone else who visited the exhibition left feeling the same way.

L

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