block one

The morning's visit to the nearby "village shop" went as well as could be expected though the shop was at the lower end of what might be considered the useful range of shopness for the area. No idea what happens there during peak season when there's a campsiteful of hungry people half a mile away. One surprise was a stack of Guardians at least fifteen high; small shops in Ayr could learn a lot despite their better provision of biscuits and flavours of fruit juice.

Though the alleged forest is only a false Forestry Commission homogeneous forest it's still a forest and was at least bordered by proper forest beside the river we selected as the best-looking path to wander down. I'd forgotten to bring my embarrassing-but-shady wide-brimmed hat and had to skulk in the shade whenever we stopped. As usual Nicky temporarily doubted my ability to have a vague idea of where we were (zero mobile reception made assurance by means of Google Maps impossible) but she luckily waited until we were half a mile from the fake lake before wondering if we should turn back so that a mere couple more minutes' trudging resulted in the view of the sparkling of the water through the trees. The way back was alongside the cycle path alongside the lake where there was little shade with the result that my temples went and stayed pink. It's little things like this which make me think it's perhaps time to grow my hair back though it wouldn't be ready until next summer if I started now.

Whilst I agree with the installation of publicly-accessible pieces or artstuffs around the place I think some of them might be better if the artists weren't directly quoted on the little information things. There's a thing next to Kielder Castle called Minotaur which consist of a maze made of gabions. That's it: it's a maze, made of gabions, simply described. It's about twenty metres to a side, seven feet high, has a couple of windows and a couple of entrances. The bit you have to get to is a cave made with chunks of recycled glass instead of the rocks used elsewhere. It is not what it is described as on the little information thing. I can't remember the wording exactly but it was something extremely pretentious along the lines of "MINOTAUR is living link of stone between portal of mind and infinite expanse of time and existence" or somesuch bobbins. Full marks for using interesting materials and for not making it a cop-out four feet high so that scared people don't get scared when they get lost but minus three hundred points for conforming to the stereotype of the speak-full-of-arse artist. Grrr. Luckily the quote didn't explain why they'd called the entire maze Minotaur rather than calling the maze a Labyrinth and the monster in the middle the Minotaur (perhaps renaming themselves Daedalus Coombe and Icarus Kitchen whilst so doing), perhaps by implying that when someone stood in the centre then the Labyrinth was at the centre of Minotaur. It's worth a poke if you're in the area but would be far better if it was five times the size and not artspeaked-up.