Tuesday 15 July 2014

Let the hunt begin!

So it's been a while since I joined in with the Travel Tuesday link up, sorry about that! But I'm back this week to join in with Bonnie and everyone else as I had the best weekend of book bench hunting which needs sharing!

Book bench hunting I hear you cry, what on earth is that? Well Books about Town is only the most genius idea ever by the National Literacy Trust who have positioned fifty fabulous benches across London for the summer and created four book bench trails. Each bench is focused on one brilliant book or writer/illustrator team. Books for all ages and across all genres are represented and hunting the benches makes for a great day out!

I'd heard about the benches as the publisher I work for has created a beautiful one and I wanted to see more of them. So when a friend suggested a day in sunny London to hunt out some of the benches I was totally up for it! We chose to do the Bloomsbury trail and the Riverside trail on Saturday and it was brilliant! We saw loads of brilliant benches - my favourites are littered throughout this post! Plus it meant we saw a lot of top London sites too - the Tower of London, The Globe, Tower Bridge and so much more!

There are still two trails that I want to try out, the first in the city itself and the other over in Greenwich, so I just need to find another free weekend and a willing partner for the hunt. If you're in London over the summer I highly recommend you have a go too, it's great fun!

One of my favourite benches - Paddington Bear!

Tower Bridge in all its glory.



The War House bench was so beautiful I had to take lots of pictures. I just love the simplicity of this bench and think it captures the spirit of the book perfectly.

The Shakespeare bench - outside The Globe of course.

And the back of the Shakespeare bench.

Walking over the famous Tower Bridge


The front and back of Axel Scheffler's bench featuring some of his familiar characters!

Old and new London spotted on our London tour

The Clarice Bean bench by Lauren Child

I love that the Dr Seuss book has the characters reading together.



Travel Tuesday

13 comments:

  1. What a lovely idea!! Love the Shakespeare bench!

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    1. Me too - yes such a great idea! Thanks for stopping by. x

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  2. What??? I never knew about that and it such a fantastic idea! I love it! Thanks so much for sharing! Glad I found out about that :)
    I particularly love the first two benches, beautiful!

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    1. It's an amazing idea isn't it! And it was such fun to hunt for them too. I agree the War Horse and Paddington benches are beautiful aren't they. Thanks for stopping by.

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  3. I had never heard of this before! I can't wait until I'm there for that next year :)

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    1. It's such a great idea isn't it! I hope they're doing it when you're over next year, fingers crossed! Thanks for popping by. xx

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  4. Wow! How cool is that. Isn't London such a quirky city? I love the Paddington Bear one too! :)

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    1. It's definitely an amazing idea and an amazing city! The idea of Paddington on the bench really works doesn't it! Thanks for coming by. xxx

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  5. Those are so cool! Do you know how long they are going to be displayed? I'll be visiting London next summer.

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    1. Sadly I think these ones are only here for the summer, but I would imagine they'll do it next year if it's a success, so fingers crossed! Thanks for popping by. xx

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  6. Are those temporary? We were there a month ago and didn't see them. :( Maybe it hadn't started yet? The Greenwich one would've been cool since we were staying in that area! Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Yes only for the summer, they arrived a couple of weeks ago so wouldn't have been there for your trip. What a shame though as they're beautiful. I hope you had a good trip though. Thanks for stopping by. xxx

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