A Day Of Culture

I've wanted to visit The Yorkshire Sculpture Park for some time now and we eventually got there yesterday. It's only a short trip down the M1 motorway, so I don't know why it's taken so long to visit.

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is in the parkland of Bretton Hall in West Bretton, Wakefield and the sculptures are dotted around the grounds.

It's the most beautiful setting with such a wide expanse of land and the River Dearne running through it, which is dammed to form two lakes.

The grounds themselves are a haven for wildlife, we saw lots of small tortoiseshell butterflies amongst others, different moths, black hairy caterpillars which I can't identify, ducks and even a heron. You'll need to look hard to see it in this photo, it's right at the waters edge. I definitely need a zoom lens for my camera.

There were some beautiful trees in the grounds, just look at this one. It's branches stretched out so wide.

I think it's going to be a good conker year, this tree's laden with them.

On to the sculptures themselves then. My favourite is Sitting by Sophie Ryder. I don't know what it is about this sculpture that I like, perhaps it's the animal connection. It has the head of a hare and its body is modelled on Ryder's own.

It's a bit weird being cut in two as it is though.

Three Riace Bronzes by Elizabeth Frink. Archie didn't like these much, he growled at them.

Buddha by Niki de Saint Phalle.

Ten Seated Figures by Magdalena Abakanowicz. A bit weird as they have no heads.

One And Other by Antony Gormley. His other famous works are Angel of the North and Another Place on Crosby Beach. Many of his sculptures are based on moulds taken from his own body.

Monolithe by Lambert Rocour.

These are just a few of the sculptures dotted around the grounds, there's many more, and there's also five indoor galleries, though we didn't visit those as dogs aren't allowed inside and we had Archie with us.

It was a lovely day and we spent quite a while here. Just a word of warning though if you intend to visit, the car park charge is quite steep if you intend to stay any length of time, £7.50 for stays over two hours. We parked in West Bretton and walked, it only took about ten minutes.

Before coming home, we decided to travel on a little further to Elsecar Heritage Centre and have a look aroung the shops. It's located in the old ironworks and colliery workshops and is now an Antique, History and Craft Centre. The little shops there are interesting to look round.

Elsecar Heritage Railway is also here. Volunteers have restored a variety of rolling stock and undertaken a range of track work, a project which is ongoing.

We popped in to the old fashioned sweet shop to buy supplies for our journey home, cinder toffee and Pontefract cakes.

It was an enjoyable day out. Mick's on holiday from work now so we hope to have a few more days out this week.