Storybook Glen is a fairytale paradise situated 6 miles west of Aberdeen. Started in the 1980s after the owner saw something similar in Canada it's a childhood time capsule. The concept is pretty simple - it's a park full of statues of storybook characters. They run the gamut from classic to modern - from Wee Willie Winkie to Tinky Winky. Over 28 acres there are more than 100 characters scattered randomly throughout the park in a way that turns an amble into a journey of adventure. Some of the statues are in plain view, others are hidden along secret pathways so you never know who is going to loom at you out of a bush.

Some of the characters are instantly recognisable. Miss Muffet who was sitting on her tuffet eating her curds and whey is a no brainer. Others take a bit more thought - the lady lurking in the undergrowth brandishing a cleaver turns out to be the story of Three Blind Mice. A select few I'd never heard of at all, like Handy Pandy, the jack-a-dandy who loves plum cake and sugar candy. Luckily many of the tales are signposted and there's a map for the rest.

At a quick glance two themes emerge: violence and pies, or both in the tableau that is Who Killed Cock Robin. Unaccompanied children get themselves into all kinds of scrapes - Hansel and Gretel forced out by their wicked stepmother are almost eaten alive; Little Tommy Tucker is forced to sing for his supper; Jack Be Nimble burns himself jumping over the candlestick. And those are the lucky ones - The Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe is there giving some poor child a sound beating. In contrast, the modern day figures stand out by their blandness - Wallace and Gromit are Fireman Sam are so bloody helpful by comparison.

Many of the exhibits are pretty shonky, giving them comedy value. Thomas the Tank Engine appears to be wearing make-up (I always had my suspicions), Snoopy is completely unrecognisable. The trolls in Trollworld seem like an avuncular lot while the Pixies in Pixie Land look like they could do you some serious harm. Others have an otherworldly beauty like Mary, Mary Quite Contrary or Little Red Riding Hood, while the rest are plain surreal like the giant chicks hatching from giant egg cups on the way to the large and impressive fairytale castle.

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Posted by Anne on October 29, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

When you tell people that you were brought up on the South Coast, people tend to think this involves ice cream, shale and all the windy, stopped-clock delights of the British seaside. Alas, in the case of Southampton they would be wrong. However the city does have one tiny little stretch of beach, and one so strange that it deserves a whole new category of terminal beaches all to itself.

Weston Shore, on the Southwestern edge of the city, before you come to the eerie village of Netley (more of which later) is a mix of Tarkovsky’s Zone, a 1930s beach utopia and a ‘60s brutalist dystopia, lining up in front of Southampton Water’s silty expanse. The first thing you notice is a line of identical towers, aligned one after the other in Alton Estate style, with one even taller one right at the end. Geometric and standardised, these council flats have at their entrances paths what can only be described as a meadow, an area of lushly overgrown vegetation leading to a thin road and a stony beach.

The road is dotted with a series of little 1930s concrete pavilions, as elegantly Modernist as anything built in that decade. A recent regeneration has cleaned them up, but in the process made them even more peculiar: each one now decorated with abstractions connected with the likes of World War Two, the Victorians, and (bizarrely) prehistoric archaeology, which frame the views of the towers and the beach itself.

Which is nothing to write home about: 2km of stones and general waste, but with pockets of undergrowth and further on, woodland. On the beach can be found some Stalker-esque inexplicable industrial waste: a pile of what seems like the fluff left by some moulting animal was lying there when I last visited. From the beach you get a view of port traffic and the occasional yacht going up and down the desolate waters, and a distant view of the vast Fawley oil refinery, its many slender towers complementing the bulkier ones on the beach side. Industry, the remnants of Social Democracy and disused leisure all make it a spot which can feel like an idyllic vision of the end of the world.

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Posted by Owen on October 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Who'd have thought Europe's oldest living thing is biding its time in a Perthshire churchyard? Driving along a back road in the middle of nowhere the brown (i.e. tourist) signs to Fortingall Yew were so intriguing I had to have a look. They direct you towards a church and as you enter the gates of the churchyard words are written out on the path. "Up ahead stands Fortingall's oldest resident, a 5000 year old yew tree", "Imagine those who have passed this way before". The path takes you alongside a fence and inside the fence is the Fortingall Yew, estimated to be between 2000 and 5000 years old.

The trunk is substantial enough but pegs on the ground mark the size the yew would have been if it hadn't been chipped away over the years. Measured at 16 metres, or 52 feet in girth in 1769, chunks of the original were removed as souvenirs until an arch was formed which funeral processions passed through. Ironically the yew's repuation at the "tree of eternity" hastened its downfall until a fence was put in place to protect what was left. As a precautionary measure some branches were recently removed by the Forestry Commission to be cloned in the same lab as Doly the Sheep. They will then be planted in woods around the country.

Marketed as "Big Tree Country", Perthshire also boasts the world's largest hedge and widest conifer in Britain, plus the Dunkeld Larch (250 years old, but one of the first of its type planted in Scotland) and the Shakesperean Birnam Oak (the last remaining tree in the wood made famous by Macbeth). A plaque notes that the tree was designated as one of Britain's 50 Greatest Trees in 2002.

Beside the tree, Fortingall itself is an interesting little place. Its other claim to fame is as the home of Pontius Pilate, although the evidence for that is a bit scant. If you visit the yew, the adjoining church is quite pretty, and the neighbouring Fortingall Hotel provides parking and refreshments.

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Posted by Anne on October 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)