The last fortnight has included my birthday and I was fortunate enough to be given the best birthday cake ever:
This beauty is a Pavlova (meringue base, with whipped cream, raspberries, blueberries and chopped pistachio nuts on top). The various components travelled all the way from Manchester and were assembled and presented – complete with lit candles – as a birthday surprise. Wonderful.
So from tiny flames to larger ones… also during this fortnight was the first ever Fire and Ice festival in Durham. I didn’t get to see the evening show of fire, fountains and smoke (too busy eating birthday cake – see above), but the ice-sculptures around the city were lovely, each of them marked with a beacon of fire. The first one I saw on Friday morning, just outside the library was a bust of Robert Swan the polar explorer, who was born in Durham:
In the market-place we found this rather splendid wolf:
The whale was on the Silver Street bridge:
… and the walrus was at the entrance to the Gates shopping centre:
Later, on the Saturday morning, I saw this beautiful, recently-carved Celtic Cross:
Fans of the much-watched TV series may like to know that the creators of Durham’s ice sculptures (Glacial Art), are the very ones who also carved ice for the sets of ‘Game of Thrones’.
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3 thoughts on “Designing with ice”