Crimes against apostrophes, and other random happenings
Categories: places
Tags: photos, Potfest, rant, grammar, apostrophe, Carlisle, Hadrian's Wall, Birdoswald
Date: 09 August 2009 21:27:48
Today HD and I made our second annual pilgrimage to Penrith, to Potfest in the Pens. Before we could feast our eyes on the beautiful pottery though, we were met at the venue (Penrith Market) by this scary character:
For some reason this is the meeting point for lost people (I guess you can't miss it). However I do think this is a bit flawed: if I were a little kid who'd got lost the last thing I'd want to go near is this, and if I were a lost adult I would be far too grumpy about the hideous misuse of apostrophes on the sign ("Granma's and Grandad's and Lost Parents" etc) to wish to be anywhere in the vicinity.
Anyway. Once that was out of my system, we proceeded to the festival. Like last year, a huge hall full of beautiful things. It was interesting though, last year when we went we actually had some money and plans to buy something (for ourselves and as presents). And last year, I saw absolutely loads of things I really liked and could have probably taken home half the exhibits. This year, as we are both broke, we both went round thinking we'll only think about buying something if we really really really really really like it, and we hardly saw anything we liked at all! Well, not that we didn't like any of it, a lot of it was lovely, but going round with the mindset that most of it was unobtainable meant that we didn't really stop to appreciate it. I don't know if that makes any sense at all, it did feel quite strange. One thing I did like was the absolutely mad stuff by someone called Julia Roxburgh - here's some examples of her stuff that sells in Fortnum & Mason: mad teapots. Most of her stuff was in this sort of style, I particularly liked the butter dishes, but I'm sorry I don't care how wonderful and quirky and brilliant they are, I'm not paying 65 quid for a butter dish! Her stuff did make me smile though, and if I was rich and had far too much money I could be tempted.
As we left we still had a good part of the afternoon left, so we decided to make a bit of a day of it and go into Carlisle, as neither of us had been there before. It seemed quite pretty (here's some pictures of the citadel):
There didn't seem all that much going on though, so we retraced our steps and headed for Hadrian's Wall. Now I'm really embarrassed to admit that despite reaching the grand old age of 40 I have never ever seen any of this UNESCO World Heritage Site in my own country. We went to a Roman fort at Birdoswald, with fabulous views:
