Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Damian is off work this week so we have been taking a few days out together and doing some bits and pieces around the house.

Earlier in the week we had planned to go to Diggerland, but I hadn’t realised that it’s only open at weekends. So, as the weather was due to be nice we thought we would head over to Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

It isn’t somewhere that we have been before but it was a nice day and we thought a nice walk would be good. Entry is free (although there are car parking costs) and we had a lovely few hours walking around the park. We took a little picnic and enjoyed eating that near to the river.

The children really enjoy having Damian at home in the week and Daniel in particular was keen for Daddy to see everything and the day was punctuated with cries of look daddy, come and see this water. Daddy daddy, come and see this duck. Emma also enjoyed having a good look around. We did have her walking for a short while but she took a lot of interest in a school group and seemed to want to tag along with them!

There are lots of sculptures and the such to look at, and some of them are pretty impressive and other, I didn’t really get. The children really liked the ‘running horse’ which is an animated ‘sculpture’ and they also liked the walk up to the top lake as that provided opportunity for ‘daddy monkey’ to have a look around. Daniel was very keen for Daddy monkey to see the Obelisk and the Greek Temple!

The lake is beautiful and very picturesque and Daniel love hiding in the shell cave whilst Damian took some pictures. There were a fair few ducks and swans too. It was a nice restful spot to sit and rest or head into the cave to take a look around.

We had a really lovely few hours at the park and it is incredibly well maintained. There is lots to see and do and it will certainly be a place we will visit again. It’s a lovely large and open space and when we visited there were some school groups there. They seemed to be concentrated in one particular area though and we were still able to take a look at the sculptures there.

There is so much to see, things both quite modern, some taking inspiration from more classical pieces and some that are longer terms installations (there is one that is a series of saplings that have been planted so will take many years to reach their potential).

The car park seemed a lot busier than the park itself felt. There were plenty of people around, but it felt very quiet and peaceful whilst we were there.