Jupiter Artland

As I mentioned in my last post, Terry and I decided to take a couple of days off last week to try and take advantage of the drier-than-usual weather (That turned out to be a wise decision, too: I’m typing this on Sunday morning, and I’m fairly sure that’s a Biblical-style rainstorm I can hear drumming against the windows…), and on Thursday we headed to Jupiter Artland, near Edinburgh, which, to lazily quote their own website, is “a contemporary sculpture garden”.

Actually, though, that doesn’t quite sum up what Jupiter Artland is. It’s in the grounds of an old mansion house (the owners live in it, so you can’t just rock up for tea and cakes, unfortunately…), and once you’ve parked up and paid (It was about £8 each, but totally worth it), you begin walking along a woodland path, which leads you past various installations, which seemed to me to be right out of one of the horror movies I love so much:

There’s a cage with a giant hole, leading to who knows where. A gun leaning against a tree. A cemetery entered through a narrow door, and with all the names removed from the gravestones. A gang of creepy girls weeping in the woods, their hair obscuring their faces, horror-movie style.

It was absolutely amazing.

Once you’ve strolled through this sinister/beautiful woodland path, however, you emerge into a different kind of dream, this time one filled with the most amazing mounds of earth:

That white thing I’m sitting on in the second-from-top photo? It’s supposed to be a sperm. I was sitting on a sperm. And I only realised after I’d smiled for the camera. Ah, well!

Oh, there are also donkeys:

And a cute little retro caravan/snack bar:

(Yes, we had three cakes. Because we had our invisible friend, Brian, with us, obviously.)

(No, it was because you had to spend more than £10 to be able to pay by card, so we were “forced” to buy another one. Oh, noes!)

There’s a whole more more, too, including a cave in the ground, made entirely out of amethyst:

Unfortunately, it was really hard to do justice to the place on film, which is why I’ve shown you more photos of the snack bar than of the actual artworks. You’ll just have to take my word for how awesome it is, though: or, better still, pay a visit yourself if you’re ever in the area.

Trust me, it’s worth it.