Author Archives: Louise Jayne

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About Louise Jayne

Avid reader who enjoys travelling and taking photos of her adventures.

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery, London

Posted on October 17, 2024 by Louise Jayne

Last week I headed down to London for a couple of days to attend two exhibitions, the first of which was the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. Van Gogh is one of my favourite painters so when I saw the announcement I knew that I would be attending. The exhibition is being billed as a once in a century event and it was easy to see why, there are paintings on loan from galleries as far away as the United States and Japan and some that are in private collections and rarely ever seen in public. There were also paintings that are displayed together again for the first time since Van Gogh painted them.

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Categories: England, London | Tags: , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regimental Museum, Stirling Castle

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Louise Jayne

Known as the Argylls, this regiment was formed in 1881 following the merger of two regiments, the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders and the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders which had each been created in the 1790s. The museum is a light airy space tracing the regiment from their foundation to the present day, including uniforms, weapons and documents. Access to the Museum is included in the admission to Stirling Castle.

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Categories: Scotland, Stirling | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Gedling House Woods and Meadows Nature Reserves, Nottingham

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Louise Jayne

Situated next to the entrance to the driveway down to Gedling House is the entrance to Gedling House Woods which I decided to visit after I’d been around the house. It was quite busy with dog walkers in the meadows area but I chose to follow the path through the woods and had them pretty much to myself, other than the squirrels.

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Categories: England, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Stirling Castle

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Louise Jayne

Stirling Castle was another one of my day trips from Edinburgh. It was an easy train ride from Waverly Station lasting around 50 minutes and then a 15-20 minute walk from the station to the castle. Do note that the walk is mostly uphill, it’s not particularly challenging but if you have mobility issues you can catch a bus up to the castle. I had pre-booked my ticket which are timed entrance (as a member of English Heritage my ticket was free); generally an adult ticket is £17.50 online, £19.50 if bought when you arrive.

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Categories: Scotland, Stirling | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Gedling House, Nottingham

Posted on October 3, 2024 by Louise Jayne

I went to school in Gedling, right next to Gedling House, and so the building has always been a source of fascination – the house and grounds were naturally out of bounds for the pupils. One weekend in mid-September it was opened to the public for free as part of the Heritage Open Days and I jumped at the chance to have a look around. Built in 1790 as a home for a wealthy Nottingham banker it is now a Buddhist meditation centre.

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Categories: England, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

St Cuthbert’s Church and Kirkyard, Edinburgh

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Louise Jayne

I wanted to visit St Cuthbert’s Church because I’m a big Agatha Christie fan and this is where she married her second husband the archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930. However, I’d already scoped out prior to arriving in Scotland that none of the opening times of the church were going to work around what day trips I already had planned so I went along knowing that I wouldn’t be able to go inside. I was pleasantly surprised therefore to find that the grounds were more extensive than I had expected and I had a very nice walk around the kirkyard late one afternoon.

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Categories: Edinburgh, Scotland | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh

Posted on September 24, 2024 by Louise Jayne

You can’t really miss St. Giles Cathedral, its looming presence in the Old Town of Edinburgh means its visible from all over the city. Saying that, I found I wasn’t really as impressed by St Giles as I have been of other cathedrals I’ve visited. One of Scotland’s most important medieval buildings the current structure was begun in the 14th century and has been a centre of Scottish historical events ever since.

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Categories: Edinburgh, Scotland | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Book Bench Trail, Newark

Posted on September 17, 2024 by Louise Jayne

A couple of weeks ago I headed out to Newark to find all the decorated book benches as part of an art trail by Newark Creates and Wild in Art. Many of you may be familiar with Wild in Art sculptures that pop up all over the country, and even as far away as Sydney and Sao Paulo. The last ones in Nottingham were the robins in 2018. You could pick up a free map from either the Palace Theatre, Newark Bus Station or download from the website. I was using a downloadable map on my phone until I fortuitously bumped into one of the people who’d organised the trail wrapping up some media interviews and she gave me a paper map. The trail finished on 5 September (this is one of a series of posts I had planned to put up before the event I was writing about finished but which got delayed due to a family medical emergency).

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Categories: England, Newark, Nottinghamshire | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Garden Visitors

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Louise Jayne

Every so often I do a post about the birds and animals I’ve photographed in the garden. We’ve had quite a few interesting visitors that I haven’t managed to photograph or that we’ve only caught on our nature camera overnight such as cats, hedgehogs, foxes and once quite memorably a badger but there are others that stuck around long enough for me to grab my camera. One such creature was this rat which had taken a liking to the seeds I put out for the birds (I moved the bird feeder around and took a break from re-filling it and this worked for a little while). [Since starting to write this post I found the rat dead in our garden – RIP].

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Categories: England, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Murder by the Book at Cambridge University Library

Posted on September 10, 2024 by Louise Jayne

My main motivation for travelling to Cambridge in August was to attend the Murder by the Book exhibition at Cambridge University Library (I had intended to get this post up before it finished on August 24th but a family medical emergency – now largely resolved – impacted all my plans). I’d never been up to the part of Cambridge where the library is located before which is the main research library of the university. Designed by Giles Gilbert Scott (designer of the red telephone box among other things) it opened in 1934.

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Categories: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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