Ten National Parks

The UK has fifteen national parks:  two in Scotland, three in Wales and ten in England. Today I'm bringing you two thirds of the set.

My friends, clients and, later today, married couple, Jon and Hannah, asked me to come up with illustrations for their wedding reception table plan. They've had happy holidays working through the list of national parks, coming from the New Forest themselves.  Here is their selection for ten tables.

Ten of the United Kingdom's national parks.

It's an ideal project for me - making lists, sketching and then filling a circle. There's wildlife, human structures, wide views and close-ups, lots of weather and a few references to the experience of visiting the elemental edifices of the British Sublime, from lunchboxes to lost gloves.

Dartmoor, The Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors, the Brecon Beacons and the Cairngorms are left out for now but here we have Exmoor, Snowdonia, the Pembrokeshire Coast, the Lake District, the Peak District, the South Downs, the Norfolk Broads, the New Forest, Northumberland and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.

I've been to most of them myself, although some may have been in early childhood. I've drifted on the Broads, scrambled up Snowdon, gasped on a South Down and got wet by Loch Lomond. Of course, there are plenty of other areas of land to gasp or get wet but the designated national parks are a great focus. Completing the set sounds like a great holiday plan.

East Anglia 2

Here are a few drawings from the trip to East Anglia.  The plans (mentioned last week) changed somewhat:  the Beccles / Saxmundham / Aldeburgh day became Cambridge; the Winterton / Cromer day became Bury St. Edmunds.  Both were my first visit, and there was more to see in Great Yarmouth.

A group of us visited Eltham Palace, outside London, for its odd mixture of Tudor and Art Deco.  I hadn't noticed Gilbert Ledward's 1930s stone carvings set above the porch, representing mountain climbing, sports, gardening and seafaring.

Drawings from Cambridge, Bury St. Edmunds, Great Yarmouth and London.

In Cambridge the exams were ending.  We saw students soaking each other with champagne and later heading out to dinners in matching jackets.  I was sitting on a shaded bank, drawing King's College Chapel and the tops of punting poles, when I heard a soft American voice saying "Don't move an inch...":  she wanted to photograph the artist for her daughter's "Anglophile scrapbook".

Cambridge:  one of the rooms in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Great Yarmouth's characteristic layout, scores of long, narrow, parallel alleyways ("rows") leading away from the quay, is still partially intact.  In the aftermath of heavy wartime bombing, many features dating back to the 17th Century were found hidden behind later walls.  A lot of the material was gathered together in a few semi-restored Row Houses.  It's a surprisingly large collection with a lot to enjoy, from elaborate plaster ceilings to hard-hat cellars.  The attendant dashed through after us to hang out the authentic washing on the line in the yard.

Great Yarmouth Row Houses:  the inside is all like this.

Sadly, the Olympia Cafeteria is no more.  It was a palace of pink and yellow plastic on Marine Parade with every kind of lowbrow seaside food.  Its navy-and-brown replacement might be just the same but I just don't want to find out.  We went to Las Palmas Cafeteria instead.