Saturday 9 July 2016

Iron Man

 

IMG_6240With Hamish chilling out on Inca and are stay coming to an end Carolyn drags takes me into Birmingham to have a look around the sights and shops.

IMG_6243With Carolyn on a mission to get down to New Street and the Bullring I have to march at double step to keep up with her . With over 160 shops in the Bullring alone I think I will hang back and just let her get on with it.

IMG_6236Now that’s a good shopping bag for Carolyn, just think how much she could get in there and guess what mug would have to carry it.

IMG_6231The six-tonne sculpture at The Bullring is twice the size of a real bull in order to give it more impact. It was installed in 2003, resting on a hidden plinth beneath the paving.  Its sculptor, Laurence Broderick asked farmers what exactly it was that made bulls look powerful and they said it was the shoulders. At a cost of £130,000 they ended up with this magnificent beast.

IMG_6238Another highlight is Antony Gormley’s sculpture, Iron Man, a six-ton, twenty foot high statue based on a pharaoh’s tomb. It seems to have dropped out of the sky and thudded into the pavement, it is supposed to symbolise the golden age of industrial supremacy that is now rusting away.  Not everyone likes it, not all local people appreciate it and, there were rumours that when Diana, Princess of Wales, came to officially reopen Victoria Square in 1994, the statue was covered up and hidden from her view so as not to offend her.                                                                             

IMG_6248Oh look what we found just a short distance from our mooring. It’s The Soloman Cutler which just happens to be a Wetherspoons. As it was a Curry Thursday it would have been rude not to partake. Have any of our boating friends been to this one I wonder ? .

It will be time to move on again in the morning. Carolyn has really enjoyed her time in Birmingham and no doubt we will be back sometime again in the not to distant future. 

                                                                                                                 Happy Days

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