In Search of Fall Colours

Following my last post on the beginning of fall, I have been investigating the best places to see the autumn colours in my area.

I live in the county of East Sussex which is in the south east of the UK but the county of Kent borders East Sussex, hence we visit Kent a lot too.

(The white patch north of Surrey and north west of Kent is London. Also the rest of kent is surrounded by the sea which you can't see on this image. A bit of UK geography!)

After some research it seems there are 2 places which are renowned for beautiful autumn colours:

1. Sheffield Park, East Sussex

This is a National Trust garden of 200 acres which includes rare trees and shrubs set around lakes which give gorgeous reflections. There are plenty of acers, Japanese maples and North American species such as Nyssa, providing some of the best autumn colours.

 2. Bedgebury Pinetum and Forest, Kent

This pinetum holds the world's finest conifer collection. You may wonder how conifers give autumn colour but interestingly, not all are evergreen.

This is what the curator has to say:

"A walk through the Pinetum reveals a variety of trees chosen for their spectacular autumn colour - including liquidamber, tulip, ginkgo, oak, black birch and recently-planted nyssa. The spindleberry and maples are already turning a vivid pink. The cornus amomum is covered in metallic blue berries and, as its leaves start to fall, the Katsura tree fills the air with the smell of candy floss. Around Marshal's Lake the dawn redwoods and swamp cypresses, despite being coniferous, take on various shades of burnt orange and foxy red before shedding their needles."

 I am drooling!

I also read in the newspaper today that the autumn colours in the Uk are going to be particularly spectacular this year due to the weather conditions. We had wet weather early in the summer which meant the trees produced a large volume of leaves which were also retained for longer. Then recently we had some very warm end-of-summer days increasing sugar levels in the trees which will boost colours even further. Now we are getting cooler nights so the leaves will start to turn.

Gosh I love this season : )

Pashley Manor Gardens - Sculpture Festival (2)

My last post featured some of the beautiful sculptures at Pashley Manor Gardens scultupre festival. Here are some more, this time of the animal sculptures and grounds:

Pashley Manor Gardens - Sculpture Festival (1)

Yesterday, my Mum and I went to visit Pashley Manor Gardens, supposedly one of the finest gardens in England, loacted on the border of Kent and East Sussex. It had been on my to do list for ages and, well, we weren't disappointed.

It was one of the most beautiful gardens I have visited in a long while. In addition, they had a sculpture festival event with beautiful sculptures strategically placed throughout the gardens.

Heathfield Agricultural Show - Animals

Following on from my post on the vintage tractors, I just had to share some pictures of the gorgeous animals at the Heathfield Show.

Walking round the sheep enclosure, I realised how different sheep can look!

This beautiful guy was my favourite. He looked soooo silky and clean:

This one, on the other hand, needed a good old hair cut. It's hard to tell where the hair ends end the straw begins . . .

This one was dinky and cute:

But my favourite animal of all at the show was  . . . .



THIS gorgeous boy:

The was a pen full of real working bloodhounds. It was a hot day so the owners were splashing buckets of water on them to keep them cool and the dogs loved it. I wanted to take one home but Minty would have something to say about that . . .

Heathfield Agricultural Show - Vintage Tractors

Yesterday, we went to the Heathfield Agricultural Show, one of the largest agricultural shows in the south east of England. There are horse, cattle, sheep and pig classes as well as lots of craft and country stalls.

It was a HOT day so we didn't stay too long. The ice cream vans had a captured market and a Mr Whippy with flake is now £2.20!! Whatever happened to the 99p?? Guess that's inflation for you!

On entering the showground, we were met with this ginormous steam tractor which was pumping away. It smelt amazing, that steam smell that makes you think of "The Railway Children".

There were rows and rows of shiny vintage tractors:

My mum fancied taking this one home . . .

There were some stunning vintage cars too:

I think I'd rather take one of the cars home! My next post will focus on the show animals!

Andy Warhol Exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion

There is currently an Andy Warhol exhibition on at a local museum, the De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill-On-Sea, East Sussex. The building is a modernist icon for contemporary arts situated right on the seafront.

 

 

I went to the exhibition before Christmas with the children I work with. They had recently been studying his work in art and had made pop art of their faces in the style of this famous picture:

Here are some of my favourites from the exhibition:

There was a whole room of cow, gun and hamburger prints. The kids didn't quite get the meaning of it and I decided not to delve into it, it was a bit graphic! Haha, those people in the photo look scared (google image)!

 

A portrait of the Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung (1972). 

Kimiko (1981), pretty!

The famous Campbell's soup. 

The man himself. Quite an interesting and rather wacky guy! But think how pop art plays such a huge part in advertising today e.g. the Ipod adverts. It would be strange without it!

The Future of Eastbourne

Following on from my last post about rediscovering Eastbourne, I noticed a display in the shopping centre about an extension and revamp due to start this year. The current shopping centre is rather dull and dated with a poor range of shops:

However, a £65 million plan has been approved to transform the shopping centre creating 26 new stores and hundreds of new jobs. It is proposed that it will be finished by 2015 and look something like this:

Loving the double height glass frontage!

 

  

It is also likely that there will be a department store such as House of Fraser or John Lewis, something which is totally lacking in this part of the south east. If the redevelopment of the centre goes ahead as planned, it will mean a huge boost to the ecomony of the town. I know I would go more often. I'm excited, let's hope it all goes to plan!

Rediscovering My Town

I live in a rural part of East Sussex and the closest towns are Eastbourne and Hastings (20 minutes away), with Tunbridge Wells a bit further away (40 minutes). Since moving down from London, one thing which I really miss is a good place to go shopping. To be honest, neither Eastbourne or Hastings have particularly good shopping centres and I really miss that trendy London shopping vibe.

The day after boxing day, we went to the sales in Eastbourne and it was hell on Earth. I wished I hadn't bothered going because it was crazy busy yet the quality of the shops and items was so poor. Today I needed to go back to exchange something and I was dreading it. So I decided I would try and have a look around other parts of the town, convinced that there must be some decent shops somewhere!

So I ventured off the beaten track a.k.a the dull, run of the mill high street which is essentially a clone of every other town high street in Britain. The first place I came across was a Chocolate Cafe which had a beautiful 12 Days of Christmas cake in the window, each layer decorated according to the song. (None of the photos in this post were taken by me, they're all off Google as I didn't have my camera).

It was nearly lunch time and I noticed they did savoury food as well as sweet so we decided to have lunch here instead of the usual sandwich in Marks and Sparks where we queued for half an hour to get a coffee last week, arrghh! Inside it looked like this:

 

It had a black and pink theme which wasn't at all over the top. I liked the black silhouette canvases and chandeliers. Immediately, I felt that trendy London vibe. The food was delicous too. The coffee was served with a single chocolate truffle which was a nice touch and the sandwiches were on freshly made granary bread with some more unusual fillings like Thai Green Chicken.

Success! I had found somewhere new and interesting! After lunch I headed to an older part of the town called Little Chelsea. It is basically two streets of independent shops, close to the attractive Town Hall which can be seen in the picture below. The bells in the clock tower happened to chime as we walked past, cute!

 

There were a few more cafes, tea rooms and pubs which looked rather nice. There were also lots of cute and quirky gift, furniture and craft shops. I also saw a huge second hand bookshop but ran out of time to go in because of the parking meter. I love rummaging in old book shops, you never know what you'll find - I will definitely go in next time. Not only were the books piled to the ceiling inside, they were also wrapped around the shop on the streets either side of it. Unusually in this day and age, the books are left outside when the shop is closed and customers put the money through the letter box!!!

I was so glad I made the effort to seek out new places today. I feel much better about my local town now. When I first moved down here I was excited to discover new places but I think since I've been working, I havn't made the effort so much. Today reminded me not to be lazy! More on Eastbourne in my next post as I discovered some interesting facts about the future of the town today.