DAY OUT: Shrewsbury Art Trail

 

We visited Shrewsbury many years ago, at least we think we did - because absolutely nothing looked remotely familiar! We were drawn there by the 'Arts Trail' which included a few Dali / Dali-inspired statues, most of which were to be found in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

There were also other artworks on display such as the preserved wood above and the Damien Hirst below... 

We then had a look in the window of the jewellers opposite and saw the new blue Solargraph, which wasn't exciting enough to venture inside to try it on. And then we set off in search of the 'Quarry', a park with a garden/lake in the middle where another statue was to be found. Well, we got lost and backtracked and eventually made our way to the castle instead which had another Dali sculpture.

This was the best of the lot, but the castle itself didn't look that exciting so we headed off to try and find the park again. We got there eventually and the gardens were very nice indeed!

This last statue was a bit underwhelming though, it didn't help that we thought we were looking for a Dali and it turned out to be this statue (Poise & Elegance) by Jacob Chandler. Which is okay, but we'd already seen a smaller version of it at the museum, and it was still a bit small to be putting it in a garden like this.

We headed back into town and tried to look around the shopping centre but the place was a maze and we couldn't even work out how to get back to the car park, so (hot and frustrated) we ended up going back out and walking round the block. 

Our next stop was the 'Windmill Inn' which was a few miles outside of Shrewsbury (in the opposite direction to home, not that it mattered) and that was quite nice. We had Scampi and Chips and shared a delicious Biscoff Cheesecake. When we ordered we were told we might have to wait half an hour, but the food turned up in about ten minutes - in the meantime we were brought cutlery by the most precise waitress ever, who placed each item of tableware with millimetre precision, bless her.

We had a mind to visit the IronBridge Sculpture park which was not too far away, but is it was were going to arrive about 3:10pm and place shuts at 4:00pm, and with 100 sculptures to look at it seemed like it wasn't worth it, much better to come back another day and do it properly.