Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
We've had such an amazing trip to Liverpool - to see the Royal Deluxe Giants.
I've been longing to see them ever since their Liverpool visit in 2014 was on the News, so I was thrilled when I discovered that they were
returning this year and we booked our hotel months ago.
On the first day we saw evidence of giants.. a huge sandal caught in a fishing net and a strange raft appeared in Canning Dock.
And ... oops, someone has sliced a bus in half, with a very large butter knife! And stabbed a car with a huge fork.
And then we saw the Little Boy Giant asleep in St George's Hall.
We queued for over an hour outside whilst being entertained by the Royal deluxe band and then finally got in to the beautiful building, with the 'little' 20-foot boy lying in his hammock.
The next day we took the ferry across the Mersey.
The Snowdrop has been 'Razzle Dazzled' by the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's album artist, Sir Peter Blake.
Liverpool from the ferry - on our way to The Wirral - where we knew the giant had washed ashore...
We walked along the promenade from the Seacombe Ferry terminal to New Brighton where we waited, with thousands of other people, for the BIG (33-foot) giant to wake up... More music, this time some beautiful melodic violin playing from this musician on her dumper truck full of violins.
The excitement grew as we could see the cranes lifting the giant in the distance...
... and then walking towards us.
The instructions are to the Lilliputians (the french puppeteers) - look at them swinging through the air to make the giant's legs move!!
He walked, with the aid of 44 Lilliputians, along to another area in The Wirral. Thousands of people followed him, and the ever-present band, along the roads. Others, including us, found an alternative route to try and get in front of him - luckily the locals knew the way and we followed them with much excitement.
We got to a good spot just as the firemen were giving him a drink - look at the size of the man resting on the Giant's chest to pop a funnel in his mouth :-)
Chasing the giant was enormous fun, with such huge crowds, but the walk back to the ferry terminal was hard work - we walked 20km that day! But it was so worth it - this is meant to be the Giants last outing :-(
So, the next day the big giant had made his way back over to Liverpool, just resting on his raft while we went off to have a wander around the docks before seeing more of the Little Boy and his dog, Xolo, during their walk around the city.
They went to sleep in the Queens dock, after having a little play - unfortunately my camera didn't want to play ball in the low lighting. Suffice to say, it was a lot of fun with extremely loud music and then we went for a delicious veggie meal at Down the Hatch on Duke Street.
It was such an excellent visit to Liverpool that we were sad to be leaving on Saturday lunchtime. Luckily for us, the Little Boy and Xolo were walking virtually past our hotel, along The Strand, on Saturday morning.
So we joined the thousands of people lining the streets and had a front row position.
See what I mean about the great music? And those Lilliputians! So cool. I hope they return and I also hope that we return to Liverpool - it really is a great city.
