If you have spent any time in London or Bristol over the past few weeks or so, you may have seen these colourful sculptures of Aardman Animations’ well-loved character, “Shaun The Sheep” across the city.
These are part of the #ShaunInTheCity appeal – a fun filled challenge to find all the sheep across the city – all to raise money and awareness for charity.
“Shaun In The City” raises money for “The Grand Appeal”, the charity associated with providing support, equipment and facilities at Bristol Children’s Hospital, and the Wallace and Gromit’s Children’s Charity.
Each sculpture is designed and created individually by various artists, designers and celebrities and as such each one is completely unique – they have names too! 🙂
The timing is great as well – it is the perfect thing to do with kids over the summer holidays and a great way to get outside more too! There are 70 sculptures in Bristol and 50 in London to find – So get searching!
The Bristol trail opened this week and runs until the 31st August. As this was the first weekend of the Bristol trail, and I happened to be in Bristol, I decided to have a go!
The Bristol trail itself is set up in several mini-trails – it covers a huge area of the city and each trail is set up to be between 2km and 7km with estimated times and difficulty rating – you could just drive some of it (parking could be an issue in some cases though!
There is a very helpful App for the iPhone and Android which tells you how far away the next Shaun is, and in which direction as well as having a map which shows the sheep you have found (with a happy green tick!) and the sheep you haven’t (with a red circle…!) – I can imagine this would be particularly popular with tech-savvy kids as well as grown ups!
I decided that I wanted a serious challenge, so, instead of attempting one of the 9 trails in Bristol, each approx 2 hrs and about 5km walking, I would try to do the whole thing over one weekend – MADNESS!
70 Sheep, a HUGE city, whatever the weather – this was my own trail. The Girl On A Journey #ShaunInTheCity Challenge.
So – Here goes!
THE CHALLENGE
The Place: Bristol
The Challenge: Find all 70 sheep in one weekend
Methods of Transport: By foot, and my little blue car for the further away sheep!
Day 1
Distance Travelled: 92km
Distance Walked: 15.58km
Steps Taken: 18,447
Distance Driven: 72.42km
Shaun The Sheep Found: 42 (one of which was included in the day 2 photos instead!)
First Shaun Found: 11.40am
Last Shaun Found: 11.14pm
What a long day this was – Glorious sunshine all day though – so lovely to be outside! I even went for dinner on the waterfront in the centre with my parents and we carried on the search well into the lovely, warm evening! (Thanks for supporting the mad challenge, mum and dad!)
Day 2
Distance Travelled: 22km
Distance Walked: 15.24km
Steps Taken: 18,641
Distance Driven: 6.76km
Shaun The Sheep Found: 28
First Shaun Found: 11.08am
Last Shaun Found: 5.04pm
I cannot even explain to you how tired I was for Day 2! Walking and driving in the sunshine on Day 1 had left me completely exhausted!
But I got up, and left the house just after 10.30am – into the pouring rain!
I started by foot on Day 2 – most of the sheep I had to find were relatively close to each other and were vaguely walkable – I just picked up my little blue car to help me do the final 7 which were a little further out, and my little legs were getting a bit tired!
It also rained pretty much all day on Day 2, I was not dressed for that weather, at all! Wet feet, soaked to the skin and everything in my backpack was more than just a little bit damp – But it was totally worth it to finish my challenge and drink a very very satisfying cup of hot tea!
I found them all! 70 sheep across the whole of Bristol – in less than 30 hours! Yay!
I also saw some incredible sights and some parts of my home city I have never seen before – as I mentioned in my “The 37 Most Important Things I’ve Learnt” post, exploring in your home town really does show you new places! 🙂
For more information about the appeal, fundraising opportunities and the trails, see www.shauninthecity.org.uk.
For more information about “The Grand Appeal”, see www.grandappeal.org.uk and for more about “Wallace and Gromit Children’s Charity”, see www.wallaceandgromitcharity.org.
Have you found any of the Shauns? I would love to hear about it and see your photos! Comment below or drop me a tweet @rosieladkin! 🙂
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