Stockport's Giant Leap

There's a new Frog Art Trail to follow around Stockport town centre.

Edgeleap, the Stockport County frog

Totally Stockport, the team behind Stockport's Business Improvement District (BID), rolled out a new art trail at the weekend, with Stockport's Giant Leap consisting of 19 decorated giant frog sculptures dotted around the town centre.

A frog decorated by Girlguiding Stockport

Each of the frogs has a different Stopfordian theme and have been designed by local artists, schools, businesses and community groups.

Stagecoach's 192 bus frog

I've managed to find 15 of the frogs in my two most recent wanders around town.

Sir Norman Frogster at the bottom of the infamous and historic Mealhouse Brow

Frog's were chosen as the 'things' to follow as they highlight the £1bn programme of investment and development that is regenerating Stockport, a giant leap forward for the town.

Strawberry Fields the frog, celebrating Strawberry Studios home in Stockport

The froggy art trail ends on the 28th September. Check out Stockport's Giant Leap website for more information.

Sir Hopsalot

  

Cornelius, the pyjamas wearing Holiday Inn frog

We're big fans of tickable lists and also followed the Totally Stockport Ice Trail last December. We're also ticking off the Invader pixel mosaic tile art in Manchester (and in London and Newcastle), as well as the Stockport green space list and the railway stations in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport (two left to visit) and Greater Manchester (lots to go). There is one Stockport tickable list we won't be attempting to complete though!

This froggy character by Totally Stockport was part of the Ice Trail last December

Our main tickable list challenge is our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour - where we've now visited 911 courses. When we began there were around 600 in the UK!

Links:
- Totally Stockport
- Marketing Stockport

Mario & Luigi Ice Cream Vans

Spotting some Mario & Luigi Ice Cream Vans on our travels.

We spotted a couple of Mario & Luigi ice cream vans on our weekend away in the Peak District.

Mario and Luigi in Buxton. Along with a Micky Mouse Robin Hood!

Luigi and Mario on an ice cream van in Hathersage 

We've seen Mario in quite a few interesting places in the last couple of years.

Related blog posts:
- Bootlegs
- Mario
- Luigi
- Ice Cream Van

The Simpsons ice cream van

We do enjoy spotting bootleg things and one of the best places to see them in use is on ice cream vans.

Continuing the bootleg Simpsons theme how about this for some ice cream van art we saw in Leeds last December.

Retro videogame graffiti in Luton

Spotting some retro videogame graffiti at The Mall Luton.

Last weekend we revisited our old hometown of Luton and while walking down George Street it was brilliant to see this retro videogame graffiti at The Mall shopping centre. It certainly brightened up the space.

The mural features a whole host of retro game characters and was created by Demograffix.

 

Related blog posts:
- Luton
- Art

Invasion of Manchester

Searching out Invader street art in Manchester.

MAN_16 - 10 points - my favourite

As a fan of retro videogames, tickable lists and urban exploration it's been brilliant to go 'Invader Hunting' in Manchester over the last year.

A Super Mario Invader - MAN_17 - 30 points

French street artist Invader visited the city in 2004 and put up 47 pieces of mosaic tile art with a total points value of 970. They look superb.

Yesterday I managed to find the last of the Invaders currently in place in Manchester.

Invader Hunter

This was MAN_27 and a reactivation of a piece made by Invader in 2004. Unfortunately some of the Invaders have been destroyed or stolen, while some of the buildings the Invaders were on have been knocked down entirely!

The reactivated Invader MAN_27

To date I've managed to snap 37 Invaders on the Flash Invaders app - worth 770 points. I've also visited the locations of some of the destroyed / removed Invaders. Check out my Instagram profile to see more of them.

One of the large 50 pointers - MAN_45

I've seen some of the bootlegs / homages too.

Not an Invader. This is the work of _manic_

Looking for the Space Invaders has been brilliant fun. Along with Emily we've seen a lot of the city we wouldn't necessarily have explored if we weren't Invader Hunting. It's always nice to be on a leaderboard for something too.

I've got a way to go before I'll be troubling the top 100

The first Invader I spotted in Manchester that reminded me that they existed - and got me hooked on finding more - was MAN_08 on Withy Grove Stores on Dantzic Street.

A classic

We've also snapped a few Invaders down in London and recently saw most of the Invaders in Newcastle.

To date Invader has invaded 77 cities around the world, putting up 3692 pieces. We're hoping to visit Paris where he's put up 1371 Invaders!

Check out the Invader website for more information.

Alex Ellison's Flickr page, Invader-Spotter and a whole host of people on Instagram have been very helpful in finding some of the more out of the way and hidden Invaders

Happy National Video Game Day!

Happy National Video Game Day 2017.

We were recently in Tamworth - to play the new Castle Adventure Golf course at Namco Funscape - and noticed this giant piece of video game graffiti on a legal graffiti wall on an underpass!

North Korea Exhibition in Wigan

Visiting the North Korea, An Exploration exhibition at The Old Courts in Wigan.

Last Friday we went along to the opening night of North Korea, An Exploration - an exhibition by our friend Dylan Harris from Lupine Travel. The exhibition is a showcase of a selection of rare propaganda posters and artifacts collected by Dylan from his travels to the country. There were some very interesting items and photographs from his collection on display.

Welcome to Pyongyang!

North Korea, An Exporation is open at The Old Courts in Wigan until the 30th September.

Poster from North Korea's participation in the 2010 World Cup

  

We bought a set of postcards

A book on Kim Jong Il

Also at the exhibition opening party was photography from Sandra Ratkovic's very interesting and colourful Moscow project.

Visit the Lupine Travel website for more information on the tours they organise. It's not just North Korea you can visit with them either, as they operate tours to other far-flung places including Chernobyl, Transnistria, Eritrea, Chad, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Antarctica and more!

On Dylan's 2015 trip to North Korea he and his party competed in the first-ever Pyongyang Minigolf Open Tournament! Check out the blog post Mini Golf in Pyongyang, North Korea for more information and photos of the course, said to have been in Kim Jong Un's personal residence before he gifted it to the North Korean people and had it moved to its current location.

North Korea's first Miniature Golf course

The Pyongyang Minigolf course and red velvet covered bench in the centre where it is claimed Kim Jong Un sat while he directed the workers on where to place each hole

Links:
- Lupine Travel
- The Old Courts

Related blog posts:
- Wigan
- Mini Golf in Pyongyang, North Korea

Leisure Land Crazy Golf at York Art Gallery

Playing Doug Fishbone's Leisure Land Golf course at York Art Gallery.

A look at the first three holes

On Sunday 3rd September we swung by York Art Gallery to play Doug Fishbone's Leisure Land Golf course. The 7-hole layout became the 451st we've played and 763rd visited overall on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour since September 2006.

Playing hole 2

In our match-up on the course I picked up the win with a score of 16 to Emily's 38.

My score was enough to top the leaderboard - the previous best on the day had been 26. Although when we walked back through the gardens just as the course was closing a score of 15 had been made later in the day

Doug Fishbone's Leisure Land Golf

The minigolf layout consists of holes and obstacles created by different artists from the contemporary art world.

Hole 1 - Reactor - Alligator Resort

Hole 1

Hole 1

Hole 2 - Yinka Shonibare MBE - Football Cloud

Hole 2

Hole 3 - Eyal and Ines Weizman - The Bridge of Königsberg

My favourite hole - it's always great to score less than 1 on a hole!

Hole 4 - Hetain Patel - Coloured Processor

Hole 4  not the easiest hole(s) to play!

Hole 4

Hole 4

Hole 5 - John Akomfrah - The Turkey Shoot Galactico

Hole 5

Hole 5

Hole 6 - Doug Fishbone - SOS

Hole 6

Hole 6

Hole 6

Hole 7 - Ellie Harrison - Life Raft

Hole 7

X marks the spot

The green on hole 7

Doug Fishbone's Leisure Land Golf course was open at York Art Gallery throughout the summer following its installation as part of an Art Happens campaign to bring the course to York. It was originally created for the Venice Biennale in 2015 and last year was in Nottingham and Derby. I played the course in Nottingham - it was 10-holes then. And indoors.

Who knows where it'll be installed next...

Emily playing hole 2

Minigolf is a popular theme for artists and we've played a few other art-installation pop-up crazy golf courses on our travels. Our friends of at A Couple of Putts have also created a few holes, obstacles and courses for art galleries and shows!

Visit the York Art Gallery website for more information on the exhibition.

Links:
- York Art Gallery

Related blog posts:
- York
- Crazy World of Minigolf Tour
- Doug Fishbone's Leisure Land Golf in Venice
- Doug Fishbone's Leisure Land Golf in Nottingham

Videos of the course:
- Hole 1
- Hole 3 - scoring a '2'
- Hole 3 - scoring another '2'
- Hole 3 - scoring a hole-in-none!
- Hole 4
- Hole 5
- Hole 7