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Monthly Archives: January 2011

Smoking squirrels attract visitors at the London Museum of Everything

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Posted by trev on January 23, 2011 – 1:05 pm
Filed under Attractions

London has plenty of strange museums, but the London Museum of Everything is definitely one of the strangest we’ve ever come across.

The museum is essentially a collection of “art works” which people have made for the sake of it, for fun or just to be a little strange rather than for financial gain. For example where else can you see smoking squirrels playing cards and a carnival of the weird?

The animals are models, but the owners of the museum have collected everything which really wouldn’t fit into any other museum. Much of it is based on those strange carnivals which used to roam the US during the 1800s and early 1900s, with posters and other models, but most cross the line from real into art.

All the models in the museum come from the sheds of Britain which are known worldwide for being the secret labs used for everything from watching football to clockwork radios.

The BBC have produced a video of the London Museum of Everything.

London Museum of Everything web site.

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The museum in a hotel at the Walpole Bay

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Posted by trev on January 22, 2011 – 3:28 pm
Filed under Accommodation

The Walpole Bay Hotel is one of those rather unique British hotels which refuse to conform as shown by having a museum of itself.

Many old hotels have been “sympathetically restored”, but they still lack the very essence and history which the owners are trying to restore.

Luckily, the previous owners of the Walpole Bay Hotel in Cliftonville, Kent, decided for whatever reason to with with the Edwardian fabric of the hotel which gives the current owners something very rare – an authentic Edwardian hotel.

The hotel is in-fact so authentic, that as well as offering guests the ability to step back to a more gentile time, they can also trace the very history of the building through the hotel’s very own museum of the Walpole Hotel.

The museum features photographs from the early visitors back in 1915 when the hotel opened, along with a couple of original and still working gas lamps and possibly the piese-de-resistance – the original 1915 trellis gated Otis lift as you might see in films up to the 1950s. Incredibly, the lift has apparently worked without failure since its installation and guests can still take a trip up the three floors.

The hotel isn’t completely set in the past and received very good reviews recently in the Guardian.

More details at the The Walpole hotel and museum web site.

More Cliftonville and Margate links:
Margate hotels (near Cliftonville)
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Visitor attractions in Margate

New £400,000 art work will be biggest ever sculpture in Belfast

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Posted by trev on January 22, 2011 – 3:02 pm
Filed under Attractions

Two globes, one inside the other to symbolise the rising sun are being proposed as the biggest sculpture to be built in Belfast in a hope that it will help with the reconstruction of the city’s population.

The sculpture called “Rise” has been designed by Wolfgang Buttress will be around 40m high and 30m wide, on the Broadway roundabout (one of the major routes into Belfast) and will be lit up from dusk to dawn. The cost of £486,000 for the sculpture is making it a little controversial considering the city council is cutting budgets and jobs.

Originally proposed three years ago, the sculpture has already been the subject of a public meeting back in December and another was proposed this January, but nobody turned up which might suggest that people are starting to warm to the idea of the work, at least according to councillors.

The image above gives an idea of what the sculpture might look like when installed on the roundabout.

Belfast Links:
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Want to ski in Britain – how about Cumbria?

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Posted by trev on January 22, 2011 – 1:31 pm
Filed under Miscellaneous

Mention British skiing and most people think “Scotland”, but as long as you’re a little flexible, the English ski slopes might be better.

The Cumbrian ski slopes aren’t as well known and most don’t have the full blown facilities of say Aviemore with twenty ski-shops and fifteen cafes, but if you enjoy skiing for the sake of skiing these will be much more satisfying.

Two of the best in the country are Raise and Yad Moss in Cumbria, mostly because we’re a fair way north and we’ve got these rather large hills known as the Pennines and Lake District fells, oh and it rains / snows quite a lot too.

As this isn’t the alps the slopes are only open when it snows, so these might not be suitable for family skiing holidays, but for ski weekends these are ideal and a lot cheaper than most ski resorts in Scotland.

Yad Moss in North Cumbria is the biggest and possibly the closest you’ll get to a full blown ski centre. It is situated on the side of the Pennines around 6 miles south of Alston.

The actual pistes are worked out each year as with most of these sites, but they do have a Poma stacking button lift with permanent pylons, two piste bashers and a new slope-side cafe. The slopes are run by Carlisle Ski Club (who as it happens have an artificial slope in Carlisle).

Raise ski slope on Helvellyn has been running since 1936 and now even has it’s own webcam during the Winter so you can check out snow conditions on the day. The slopes are run by the Lake District Ski Club and for insurance reasons you do have to be a member, but that costs around £20 a year.

Facilities include one permanent button lift with lift pylons and a hut at the top, which some claim is the highest building in England. On and off-piste is possible (see video at bottom for off-piste).

Off-piste skiing on Helvellyn video:

If you really know what you’re doing, you can go a little further up from the traditional ski-slopes and do some quite spectacular skiing.

(Original video here on Flickr)

More Cumbria & Lake District resources:
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Free Android & iPhone app from Museum of London

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Posted by trev on January 22, 2011 – 10:10 am
Filed under Attractions

The Museum of London have produced what looks like quite a fascinating app for iPhones and Android phones.

According to the museum web site, the app takes many forms by combining historical information about an area with photos taken at various times all using the inbuilt GPS.

For example if you stand in Piccadilly Circus and turn the camera on, the iPhone / Android app will show you photos of what the area used to look like embedded on top of the current day scene.

For iPhones prior to the 3GS or Android phones that don’t support GPS, you can select points on the map for historical information about that location going back several hundred years.

There’s a page on the museum’s web site for the app, although I’m not exactly sure how you’re supposed to download it. At a guess if you point your phone at this Museum of London history app link then it’ll do the hard work (trying to confirm this with the Museum web manager).

More London Links:
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A little bit of Mexico in a London hotel

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Posted by trev on January 21, 2011 – 3:02 pm
Filed under Accommodation

You no longer need to pack the suitcases and jet off across the Atlantic to visit Mexico as it’s all here…in one London hotel.

The Church Street Hotel is situated in the Camberwell region of South West London and from the outside it looks like many other London hotels. When you walk through the door however you’ll immediately think you’ve been ported across the big pond to the land of tamales, tortillas and gorditas.

A brainchild of brothers Mel and Jose Raido, the hotel is decorated and decked out in everything Mexican right down to the metal bedsteads and mottled paint on the walls. Even the room blinds are made from strips of wood to give the Mexican feel.

There are little shots of cuba included in the design such as the Havana lounge where oil clothes are laid on the breakfast tables. But in essence this is a pure Mexican experience.

This is almost certainly unique in London and if you can find a Mexican tapas bar somewhere nearby, well you’ll forget your in the capital at all.

Church Street Hotel – 29-33 Camberwell Church Street, London SE5 8TR

More Camberwell Resources:
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Shakespeare’s London comes to an iPhone app

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Posted by trev on January 21, 2011 – 2:45 pm
Filed under Attractions

If you’re interested in the real story of Shakespeare in London and you have an iPhone or iPad, then a new app might be of interest to you.

The iPhone app entitled “Shakespeare’s London” helps the user track down all the areas of London which had significant connections to the bard, even though many of these have now vanished into the history books.

The Globe theatre does of course now exist again, although only after a huge amount of effort from various actors including American actor Sam Wanamaker.

Many others aren’t even marked such as The Swan theatre which had a capacity of around 3000 people which is hugely more than you could get into any London theatre today, or the Blackfriars theatre which was used in Winter as a replacement for the Globe (due to its open roof).

For someone as important as Shakespeare to world litterature, it seems that only Stratford-upon-Avon (where he was born) really commemorates him. This is slightly odd considering he did most of his actual writing and plays in London, not Stratford.

Shakespeare’s London in the Apple store costing £1.79.

More London Resources:
Hotels all around London
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Editorial note: Before anyone asks, I can not vouch for the quality of the app as I don’t have an iPhone and am a long way from London even if I did, but this was published in the Guardian and looked useful so I’m passing it on without warranty, etc etc.

Luxury British self-catering for the very wealthy

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Posted by trev on January 21, 2011 – 1:33 pm
Filed under Accommodation

For those people who haven’t heard of “economic hardships”, a new Cornish self-catering company is offering them everything on a plate.

You’ll know you’re one of these people if for example your lifestyle means you’re just too busy to drive from London to a Cornish holiday home, or if “self-catering” and “maid service” don’t seem to rather contradict.

A new Cornish self-catering company – Cornish Cribs – is catering for just this market. Set-up by former City workers Julianne Shelton and Nadia Durrant, the company aims to offer self-catering holidays for those with lots and lots of money who want to cherry pick the very best accommodation available.

Client options include a private helicopter to fly you direct to the accommodation (many have helipads), specialist catering services and of course maid service so you don’t even need to turn back the sheets.

The houses themselves are very exclusive and expensive many featuring the kind of views simply not obtainable anywhere else, but it seems there are plenty of people who are quite willing to rent a £4m house for around £7,000 a week and that doesn’t include any of the extras.

So it seems the traditional idea that the wealthy jet off for a weekend break to their desert island might not be quite true after-all….unless you’re Richard Branson perhaps.

More information on the Cornish Cribs web site.

Of course there are plenty of lovely self-catering properties in Cornwall without this kind of price tag.

London restaurants awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2011

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Posted by trev on January 21, 2011 – 12:07 pm
Filed under Eating & Drinking

Alongside the 7 new London Michelin Star restaurants in the capital, another 10 restaurants received the Bib Gourmand by Michelin award.

The “Bib Gourmand” has been running since 1955 and is a Michelin award for restaurants offering outstanding food & service at “moderate prices”, where a maximum price is determined each year by the judges. Although not as famous as the Michelin Star, this award is just as coveted.

For 2011, ten new restaurants appeared in the Michelin Guide having been awarded the Bib Gourmand in London alone. The list contains a variety of restaurant and bar types from traditional English to Italian, Chinese and Spanish.

Full list of Bib Gourmand awarded restaurants in London for 2011:

28°-50° Wine Workshop & Kitchen
Canton Arms
Charlotte’s Bistro
Galvin Café A Vin
Goldfish City
Ibérica Food & Culture
Morito
Polpo
Trullo
Zucca

There’s a full run-down of the new London Michelin Star and Bib Gourmand winners in Timeout including reviews of each.

Top 10 hotels in Britain from Tripadvisor Awards

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Posted by trev on January 21, 2011 – 10:02 am
Filed under Accommodation

The votes are in and the Top 10 hotels in Britain have been selected by Tripadvisor users as part of their Travellers Choice Awards 2011.

Interestingly, all the hotels in the list were chosen by people from Europe which gives the hotels outside London more of a chance to feature (as Americans do tend to focus more on London).

The list consists of hotels big and small from all corners of the country and seems to reflect a taste for more countryside based hotels rather than large chains or hotels in the middle of a city. Quite a number are from the West Country region, but other popular areas are included such as the Lake District and west of Scotland.

1: The winner overall of the best hotel in Britain award was the four star Rudding Park Hotel just outside the spa town of Harrogate (pictured above). The hotel is set within an 18th Century parkland with an 18-hole golf course and a 2 AA Rosettes restaurant also came first in 2010 for the same award.

2: Second in the list was the The Old Rectory Hotel in Martinhoe, on the edge of the Exmoor National Park in Devon. The hotel building was originally the Georgian Rectory to the 11th century church, and today welcomes guests to this friendly, relaxed and civilised country house retreat in the West Country.

3: Coming third was another West Country entry, the Boskerris Hotel in St. Ives, which describes itself as a “contemporary, boutique hotel with a relaxed Mediterranean style”, with “views across St Ives Bay”.

The other hotels in the list were as follows:

4: Charterhouse Hotel in Torquay
5: Abbot’s Brae Hotel in Dunoon
6: Overwater Hall in Keswick, Lake District
7: Elmdene Hotel in Torquay
8: Can-y-Bae in Llandudno, North Wales
9: Haytor Hotel in Torquay
10: Apsley House Hotel in Bath, Somerset

If these don’t fit your requirements, UKHotel has 1000s of hotels around the UK and to compliment, UKattraction has over 10,000 places to visit around Britain.

The full list can be found on the Tripadvisor Travellers Choice Awards.