The tourist board would have you believe that King’s Lynn is famous for its historical buildings and nautical history, but when we visited there was only one thing that stood out - the Campbell’s Soup Factory on Hardwick Road.

Sitting on the outskirts of town, the tower sporting the famous Campbell's logo stands proud against the flat Fens of the Norfolk countryside. Campbell's is a familiar brand, well-known in most kitchens. Andy Warhol's famous reworking of its soup cans in the 1960s makes it even more iconic. So, seeing something this size, in such isolation is more like a piece of art than industry. If this was America, some flashing neon and a giant slurping spoon would complete the picture.

The first cans rolled off the production line here in 1959, in the first major Campbell's factory outside America. Within 20 years the factory employed more than 500 staff, making more than 60 varieties of soup. As if one culinary legend wasn't enough, Fray Bentos pies moved here in the early 90s, but sadly even this couldn't guarantee the factory's future. Premier Foods bought the company for £460 million in 1996 and in January 2007 it announced that it would be closing the site with the loss of 245 jobs.

Now Campbell's soup has disappeared both from King's Lynn and the supermarket shelves – it has been rebranded as Bachelor's condensed soup. Thankfully the tower has held onto its livery, albeit for a short while. Tesco, who owns the site, announced last week that the tower will be demolished to make way for a larger supermarket. Its demise will bring much needed jobs to the area but there’s still a note of sadness as a famous brand and an industrial icon disappears from King's Lynn skyline. Catch it while you can (pun intended).

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Posted by Anne on March 28, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Fat fortunes were made and lost in the Butter Exchange, where now the stone cow’s head looks down, not on the city’s dairy kings, but on the visitors to the Cork Butter Museum

And it’s a sign of just how important the butter business was that it occupies the full two floors of this 19th-century building – the biggest Butter Exchange in Europe.

It’s here that you’ll learn how the lushness of the grass in the south of Ireland makes the milk particularly rich and flavoursome - the perfect raw material for really good butter.

You’ll be taken through the complete history of Irish butter, from being stored in bogs to keep ‘fresh’ - marvel at the ‘1000-year-old keg of butter’ - to the glory days of the worldwide butter empire. In fact by 1900, Cork butter was so popular it was exported to all over the globe, including Jamaica and Australia, in tins and heavily salted to preserve it during the journey. Just a few decades later refrigeration knocked the bottom out of the market until Kerry Gold modernised Irish butter production and turned the faltering trade into today’s mighty butter behemoth.

I have to admit to first being a little sniffy at the idea of a butter museum, then secretly hoping for giant butter sculptures or trombone-playing butter men a la Douglas the Lurpak mascot.

The Museum pays full tribute to a crucial section of the Irish economy. From the actual making of butter - to most of us probably a bit of mystery involving vague ideas about churning - to the selling of it, including the changing design of butter wrappers – my favourite being the one from 1922 exhorting consumers to do their patriotic duty and buy Irish Free State butter – just about every aspect of the business is covered.

And it’s located in Shandon, a hillside of shabby, decaying yet enticing little 19th century streets which are definitely worth a wee wander.

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Posted by Lucy on March 16, 2009 | Permalink

Weston-super-Mare is blessed with two special transport museums. The nippy Lambretta Museum is in town while on the outskirts, The Helicopter Museum houses a more substantial type of vehicle.

Now the world’s largest dedicated helicopter museum, it has been growing steadily since 1958, when the founder Elfan ap Rees, an aviation writer and historian started to collect rotorcraft. Now here's where the vocabulary gets interesting - rotorcraft is a complex famlly of vehicles including helicopters, autogyros (same as gyroplanes), gyrodynes and tiltrotors. It became the British Rotorcraft Museum in 1978 but that wasn’t so catchy. Whatever it’s called, every variation is here, from bizarre early prototypes to hulking military beasts. There’s even a Gyro-Boat. Either way, it's a wonder any of them got off the ground. It just doesn't seem natural.

The early days of flight are marked by the Cierva Memorial Building, named after Don Juan de la Cierva, the designer and founder of the practical autogyro (as opposed to the impractical autogyro, of which there were many). The collection contains many rare and delicate vintage craft with great names like the Thruxton Gadfly and the Campbell Cougar as well as the modern superstars of the helicopter world - the fearsome Russian Army Mil Mi-24, the G-LYNX world record speed holder and royal helicopter The Queen's Flight. And it’s not just helicopters - Helix, the only teddy bear to have completed a round the world helicopter flight is here too.

Beside the shop and cafe there's an excellent display of models (some pretty substantial) and toy helicopters including Budgie, created by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York who trained as a pilot in the Navy. He's all but forgotten in most households, but is fondly remembered here. Kids can take a ride in a miniature Budgie, or play around in the cockpit of a proper helicopter firmly rooted to the ground outside. The museum runs a number of special "Helidays" throughout the year where vistors can enjoy helicopter rides from the beach, as well as Open Cockpit Days where grown-ups can pretend to fly too.

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Posted by Anne on March 08, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Old Pier Book Shop on Morecambe's Marine Road (the main drag) makes Glasgow’s Voltaire and Rousseau look positively organised. After browsing through the boxes and shelves outside I was tempted in, a little daunted by the amount of books inside. Open the door and the smell hits you, that unmistakable booky odour. Alan Bennett was blaring out on the radio, which couldn't have been more appropriate.

Inside, it is huge in a Tardis-like fashion. A series of doorways (all framed by books, even along the top) lead into each other, creating a strange Hall of Mirrors effect. Because there were so many books on show I had pretty much convinced myself that the book about motorway services stations that I'd been looking for would be there somewhere. So I looked for the travel section but nothing seemed to be in any particular order. There are some shelves that might possibly be a war section, and some vaguely historical titles but in the main, any subject arrangement appears coincidental, at best.

There are no signs or labels either, which in a bookshop this size seems foolhardy if not downright wilful. No matter though, because the owner, Tony Vettesse claims he knows where everything is. His parents ran the premises as a cafe called The Ramblers for years. When they retired Tony decided to give the second-hand books that he'd been slipping into the cafe their own space. 60,000 titles later and here we are.

Burrowing into the interior, I quickly lost my travelling companion along with all sense of time and space. The volume of books and the labyrinthine layout of the shelves make it disorientating very quickly. It was a relief to reach the sci-fi section at the back and be able to ignore a few bays. Randomly, over by what I believe may be windows is a stuffed goose.

It was one of the few shops in Morecambe open after 5 on a Saturday and I wondered if we'd be locked in. The proprietor was so hemmed in by stock that I'm not even sure he noticed us arriving. It's quite possible that down the back there's a little Japanese soldier still fighting the war. I did wonder if they ever close, as the range of stock outside looks like it would be a bit tricky to secure. I'd just stay open I think. Books make great pillows.

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Posted by Anne on March 01, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)