I managed to get tickets to see Marie Antoinette Style on the same day as the Cartier exhibition, so after visiting that exhibition and having a cup of tea and a very nice slice of cake in the cafe I headed into my second event of the day. On display were a surprising amount of Marie Antoinette’s belongings as well as items contemporary to her life and items that were inspired by her life and fashion choices centuries after her execution.
Back in September I stayed in Shrewsbury for four nights in part because it is a quick 20 minute train ride to Welshpool and Powis Castle which I’ve wanted to visit for a while now. A National Trust property the castle is around a 40 minute walk from Welshpool Railway Station through a quiet deer park which I didn’t quite get to appreciate due to the pouring rain – even well prepared with a raincoat and good walking boots I was decidedly sodden by the time I got back to my B&B later that afternoon!
When I first saw the Cartier exhibition advertised I wasn’t sure I would be able to fit it in around family commitments but thankfully by around June things had opened up and I was able to book a ticket to the exhibition – for October. The exhibition is now sold out but it’s proven so popular that they are releasing extra tickets for some evenings until it closes on 16 November, so it’s still worth checking their website every so often. Members of the V&A of course can visit for free without pre-booking needed.
On the day that I was travelling via the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway I knew that I wanted to visit somewhere in Keighley and settled on Cliffe Castle Museum. I knew almost nothing about it other than it was an easy 20 minute walk from Keighley Railway Station and had free entry. I’d given myself roughly an hour to an hour and a half to explore before I had to head back to the station to catch my next train but could have spent a lot longer there as I was blown away by just how great the place was.
As I’ve mentioned previously my dad is a big train enthusiast and in fact this is one of the few steam railways that he’s never travelled on so I knew I would have to be taking a lot of photos to show him in particular. Haworth is conveniently the site of one of the stations and an easy 15 minutes or so walk from Main Street where I was staying, though it is quite a steep walk downwards.
Back in June I spent just under a week in Haworth in West Yorkshire because visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum has been on my bucket list for a great many years. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is one of my favourite novels and I wanted to follow in the footsteps of her and her siblings.
You may remember that my last visit to Bath was cut short due to Storm Darragh. My friend and I had to reschedule our Roman Baths tickets and chose the last weekend in March figuring, quite rightly as it happened, that we would have some nice weather for our return. Driving in Bath is very much not recommended so we parked as usual at the Lansdown Park and Ride and took the bus into Bath – the Roman Baths are only about a 10 minute walk from where the bus drops you off.
Directly opposite Arundel Castle is Arundel Museum which tells the history of the town spanning over thousands of years. It was founded in 1963 by a group of local people who founded the Arundel Museum Society, a registered charity that still runs the museum. It moved to its present location next to the River Arun in 2013. Tickets are £5 though you do get a discount if you show your ticket to Arundel Castle.
My last full afternoon in Athens was spent at the Athenian or Ancient Agora (not to be confused with the Roman Agora which I did not visit). It was the heart of ancient Athens where supposedly democracy first sprang to life, as the social, political and commercial hub of the city, a meeting place and a site of temples and of shops.
The Cathedral has a number of names including the Holy Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary. It’s the principal Greek Orthodox church in Athens and is the seat of the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece. Building began on Christmas Day in 1842 using marble from 72 demolished churches.
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