Bradgate Park

Around a week ago I visited Bradgate Park to draw the landscape as part of my course and have returned there several times because Bradgate is well on its way to becoming one of my favourite places.

First off it was not at all what  I expected. In my previous experience “parks” are fairly small, small enough that you could walk the perimeter of them in under 10 minutes. so I expected a small sized park. This was not the case with Bradgate, a quick Google search has found that Bradgate park is over 850 acres . So yeah, bigger than what I expected. So once I was over the size of Bradgate, and my initial thoughts of  “ This reminds me of Skyrim. I'm blatantly in Skyrim right now” I got down to work.

This is exactly how my day went

Between the mini hikes, rain and 60 mph wind \the general public trying to subtlety look at what I was drawing or approaching me and making small talk. Or me worrying about other people kids climbing up the rocks with more bravery than I ever had at that age, and dogs that want to be everyone’s friend. Bradgate is a very chilled place to draw which is one of the reasons its becoming a favourite place of mine. Another reason is the rocks.

Yep, the rocks.

I loved the rocks here because looking through the camera lens  at the right angle they turn into A scale model of a whole environment. Which is pretty awesome.

One final mention of my trips to Bradgate. Whilst hiking (ie adventuring) I saw a area of colour on the rocks, I initially thought that some kid of exotic fungi was growing out of the rock and I wanted to get a better look. To get to to this I had to trek across some marshy plants, I thought the ground was fairly even, it wasn't and I sunk quite a bit, but I did manage to get closer. Upon closer inspection the colour that caught my eye was actually a memorial of flowers, though my pictures don't do it justice it was a very well placed simple memorial and it's something I want to revisit .

Here's some of the work produced from this trip