looking for the sheep at the Great Tapestry of Scotland

Well, we seriously underestimated the amount of time needed to take in the Great Tapestry of Scotland. Another visit is already on the cards for next year especially as we will be in the area having booked the campsite for next years music festival already.

My photos do not do the work justice so I'm going to find a couple of links and will post them at the end. Also, when faced with the sheer amount of embroidery, I decided to look for specific thing, mainly sheep!

These are just a few of the sheep spotted amongst the panels, all sides of life both current and historic were pictured, here are some of my favourites.

Looking at the different stitches and techniques, I am tempted to start embroidery again :-)

For further info and much better pictures, visit this site. The Great Scottish Tapestry    and there is an interesting collection of videos here covering the tapestry being displayed in different locations before ending up at its permanent home. These help show the sheer scale of the panels and the work of so many different embroiderers in Scotland

Colours of Gala

 One of the advantages of Melrose , in addition to it being a beautiful place, is that you can travel by public transport to Galashiels which is home to the Great Scottish Tapestry but more about that in a future post,

As we stepped off the bus we came across our first piece of art, seriously, how can you not smile at these ?

The first one is called Dolly, presumably a reference to Dolly the sheep that was cloned the Roslin Institute, part of Edinburgh University in 1996

Just over the bridge we came upon a painted wall, steam engines always grab my attention as you may know.

Other walls were adorned with painting and graffiti adding colour to what could be a dismal day.

The last picture depicts Sir Walter Scott. 

A quirky statue of Robert Coltart was found in a small square, I especially like the little girl enjoying her sugary treat.

Walking up towards the town we notices that empty shops were displaying parts of the panels that make up the Tapestry.

I suspect that if we had taken the town trail, we may have found more to explore but we were heading to the home of the tapestry, a little unsure of what was on display. We were not disappointed but that's for another post.