Wednesday 10 April 2013

Home thoughts from abroad

One of the primary objectives of this trip to Cornwall was to go to Tate St Ives. I have a particular love of Ben Nicholson and the opportunity to come to the town which inspired him and Barbara Hepworth was a real draw.
Our first stop was at the Hepworth Sculpture Garden where she had her studio. I love the grand Hepworth gallery in Wakefield but this was particularly wonderful with the works seeming so at home in their garden setting.
















Afterwards we went to the main Tate St Ives gallery which was showing the centennial exhibition by William Scott and a photography exhibition of Peter Fraser. Fraser's work is all in colour and his latest work is about London as an imaginary city. This led to a wonderful workshop in the children's room where my son got to contribute to creating an imaginary city. His sculpture was based on reading The Two Towers the past couple of days.












Then we wandered town and saw the pier built by John Smeaton, an engineer who originated from the same area of Leeds as my son.




And went in the glorious St Ives Museum which is one of those brilliant local history museums stuffed to the gills with all sorts of photos, memorabilia, bric-a-brac, oddments and assortments.




At the end of the day I drove the winding road from St Ives through the desolate moorland, seascape and mining ruins that is the Lizard Peninsula to get to Land's End. The weather there was hilarious: non-specifically wet and incredibly windy. We got drenched and laughed a lot.








At 6pm, back in the car park I put John'o'Groats into the satnav and it claimed we would arrive




Surely, you can't do Land's End to John'O'Groats in 15 hours? Does this mean 9am the day after tomorrow?

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