The Sweet Sisters have arrived

What a funday out at Chesterfield Community Arts Festival. From top to toe in the pink. And what is your favourite sweet madam? sir? bon-bons? liquorice allsorts? black jacks? Not a super-wrapped chocolate bar in sight. 

'Can't believe I'm 24, got kids and I'm dressing up'.

And where will this outrageous spectacle pop up next?

What a Transformation!

Time to bring some colour to our mobile adventures.  A red sack, silver baubles and some tinsel have done the trick, getting us into the festive spirit and ready for the Rutland Christmas fancy dress ride.  Out have come the museum boxes, in have gone padding and 24 comedy crackers- you'll have to wait till next time before we tell you what's in the crackers.

On such a beautiful day, we also checked on the Geocache.  It was there, in one piece and not yet found so we need to add another clue to aid those in search of.  Here is a sneak preview of the cache.

It was a lovely walk that brought more fun ideas to our heads.  e.g. grandfather clock, broken time but we are not going to tell you anything about that till next time either.  It's a time of secrets and half truths, cos it's Christmas! 

It's been a time of walks and not cycles this past week and on Friday we did a very early morning (it was still dark) search for a Geocache in Burbage. 

Having left the SATNAV on, it ran out of battery and we were not able to find the cache. It made us realise the importance of giving enough clues without revealing too much. The snow and wind battered us but we enjoyed it, especially the lemon drizzle and chocolate cakes, marmalade wraps and hot drinks.  It was Sally N's birthday treat. 

In the bleak mid-winter...

...we ventured out into the sleet and darkness to deposit our first geocache.  We could have picked a better day but at least we were unobserved, or so we thought till a cyclist on his way home appeared.

We managed to work out the GPS and hope that we have the co-ordinates right.  We will just have to wait for someone to find it or complain that they can't.  Or, the bomb squad are alerted to a little yellow box not discretely hid on a fence post.  The thing is we have never actually seen a geocache so we don't know what it should be like.  We have just made it up as we have gone along.  No doubt serious geocachers will put us right.  Are we bothered?  No.

Not sure if we can yet call this fun, but we did make it difficult for ourselves, picking the worse night of the year so far.  We are going to find a Geocache on Friday at dawn, weather permitting.  Least then we will know if what we are doing is about right and will be able to see what we are doing.

We hid it so well, bet you can't find it!

Stop and take stock

'Ang on', 'Stop and take stock' We are bowling along with endless ideas but getting a bit bogged down. when making takes too long to do we loose our spontaneity, freshness, and fun.  We enjoyed up-cycling the clothes to sell on a market stall to fund our projects but it presented us with a nightmare of logistics to solve.  It seemed to be a distraction from what we really wanted to be doing.


Back to the museum.  We had an idea of transforming the trailer  from being a museum into different scenarios.  

1. The Cart Tarts- watch out for us cycling around or even setting up for a tea break.  We will share a cuppa with ya and the chance to let off steam about some social issue that is burning.
2. Making a gift- in a consumer world controlled by capitalism.We are giving you the chance to step outside of all of that and just MAKE something to GIVE to someone else without any expectations of any money in return.  Watch out for us on December 18th around the Peak District.
3. Pen & Cil- the cleaning ladies go walkabout- collecting debris we find and transforming it into abstract landscapes.

But we still haven't completed the museum yet. More thoughts on the projects ongoing:

The Geocache is ready to go.
The static museums are under way- collecting artifacts and characters.
Talks- and we are ready to go and talk to anybody about the project.  If you are interested then you can contact us on: 

07974 785624

Almost forgot the e-card!

"Are we there yet?" " 'Ardly."

"Where have you been today?" he said. "Round about, up and down and through and through" we said, "Collecting men" we said. Well, photographs of local characters for the fantasy museum. We found Ibsley the dancer, Red Lynch Woodfalls the lumber jack, Elcot the twitcher, John Erith the smuggler and his acomplice who has yet to be named, and Ardley with his bag of freshly collected bluets. Next time we need to collect some women too. It felt like Mr Ben's changing room coming to life. They were all intrigued and we made them smile. What good sports. It dispelled Sally L's notion that everybody had been looking grumpy earlier. 

This is bringing fantasy back into the museum- our original concept. Funny how people like telling the truth in their stories. Some of those have already been in the local newspapers; we are scanning them all, ready for the Geocaching and The Book. There are many strands to this project, wish we could make it sustainable.

Oswald Ibsley - The Dancer whose family disowned him because he wouldn't stop dancing

Redlynch Woodfalls- The Lumberjack who forgot to shout 'Timber'

The Twitcher- Clench Warton Always at the first sighting of a bird. Had a second sense about being in the right place at the right time.

John Earith & associate- The Smugglers

 

Ardley- The Man whose reply to the question 'Are we at Bicester yet?' was 'Ardley'

In our neck of the woods

Indecisive beginnings led to a meander.  When you know a place well it seems like it won't be much of an adventure and which way to go is less intriguing.  So we headed to The Midland Railway Centre at Swanwick Junction to see what stories we could find. It was deserted; undeterred we passed the No Cycling sign and carried on In Search of...  We finally found three jolly chappies who were in search of their lost pile of sand. 45 minutes later we left them with a wealth of stories and in return we put a smile back on their faces.

On into Ripley, we disturbed the hive of activity at Ripley Printers- sorry Son, did we embarrass you? They all came up trumps with historical stories, pictures and artefacts. Thanks to them all.


Feeling the need for some refreshment, we headed for Crossley Park where we met two lovely people who had great stories to share and were keen to know what we were doing and get involved with our mission.  There were lots of dogs and their owners looking at us seemed happy to approach us and were not reluctant at all.


We headed to Upper Hartshay to see John the Joiner but he was not there, however, Mephistopheles, the black cat with golden eyes, came to tell us her story- well we made it up actually!  


Then we headed down the bumpy lane to Lower Hartshay, which was more of a track with occasional bits of tarmac spattered with loose stone and grit.  At the bottom we met a smiley man in a blue boiler suit carrying egg boxes. He was friendly and told us the egg boxes were empty and he was collecting money.  We would have asked for a story but he got on his phone.  


On to Heather and she wasn't in at the old school.  Then we went to see the Gate Inn, which is now unoccupied.  It would make a great artists' studio space.   


In Swanwick we met three men gossiping outside a gate and even encountered someone that Sally L used to work with 20 years ago. She and her colleagues had lots of stories to tell.  The two young people they were with, quickly set to and wrote their stories while the adults took some time to find a tale.  They were both excited by the idea of getting their stories in the paper and put down their full names.  Eventually the 3 ladies came up with stories as well.


Down the hill, up the hill and now sister Kate and nephew Joseph weren't in either.


It's funny that even though we decided to call on a few people we knew, we were thwarted as all of them were out.  Chance encounters are much more fruitful.

'Have you been riding round today?' asked Jo...

We set off in without a wind for a change and the forecast was good.  We were on our way to the Green Fair in Chesterfield, but we decided it would still be leisurely.  Lots of smiles as usual and a big wave from the Lady in Newton who recognised us from our first day out.

We meandered down country roads, deciding which routes to take to Chesterfield.  It was lovely to be on small roads and we didn't envy people on the motorway.

We were planning to go through Temple Normanton and Hasland after Heath, then Sally L spotted the signpost for Sutton Scarsdale, and it proved a very fruitful route.  We met 7 adults and 2 children, people from Aylesbury, America, Chesterfield and Sutton Scarsdale itself. 

Well worth the detour.  More stories for the Museum and really lovely conversations and true intrigue.  The stories around the stories, the conversations we had were set against the amazing background of Sutton Scarsdale Hall.

We mosied on and made more route decisions, going via Inkersall Green rather than Calow.  In Inkersall Green the waft of a delicious chip smell lured us to a halt at the parade of shops in the centre of the village.  People were quite puzzled by our unannounced, garish arrival.  Sally L strolled into the chip shop and was soon deep in conversation about our adventures to the two men serving.  They were very intrigued but not sure if they had stories that were suitable to share.  She told them she would be back once we had eaten the chips.  While eating the chips a young women and two children stopped by and asked us about the museum.  She really wanted to tell a story but couldn't bring to mind anything she really felt she needed to share.  After a couple of attempts she wrote some things that she seemed to be happy with.  Meanwhile, Sally was lucky enough to also get a story from one of the chippy men.  The other one said we ought to broadcast some of the stories in the newspaper and get them funded through advertising.  He was full of good ideas. 

We carried on to Chesterfield, and by this time it was 12'o'clock and we thought we better get there before the Green Fair was finished.  We met lots of people in Chesterfield.  We Saw Johnny's sculpture made of recycled materials that was getting a lot of attention.  Pam Butler was there to greet us on behalf of the Chesterfield Borough Council as the Arts co-ordinator.  We caught up with Andy and Jenny from Chesterfield Transition Group who were busy making smoothies with cycle power and fixing people's bike problems.  We also met Alastair at the Paper Girl Gallery and saw Sally's art work on the wall.

Final stop before leaving Chesterfield was a brief breather on benches by the Church, when up should come Jo saying 'Have you been riding around?'.  We thought it was some car driver about to give us some trouble, but it turned out he had seen us from the bus and was intrigued by our outfits. He was our last customer- we left the town behind and then headed home with our escorts, who ditched us before we got to Grassmoor!