Ulverston Lantern Procession – 18 September 2010 – 8 to 10 pm
The Ulverston Lantern Procession 2010 will take place on Saturday September 18.
Hundreds of participants will carry illuminated paper lanterns through the town centre, creating a wonderful ‘River of Light’.
The parade will be finish at Ford Park with a bonfire and fireworks display.
The winners of the 2010 Cumbria Tourism Awards were revealed at a glitzy ceremony at The Rheged Centre, Penrith last week.
Hundreds of tourism professionals and businesses from around the county gathered at Rheged where the evening began with a drinks reception followed by a celebratory dinner. Host for the evening was Stuart Maconie, TV and radio presenter, who announced the winners and entertained the audience with a series of Cumbria related anecdotes.
Fifteen awards were presented on the night, recognising excellence in business, customer service and training and development.
Each category winner received a certificate and specially designed award, individually handcrafted by Jo Vincent of Jo Vincent Glass Designers.
The winners were:
• Taste of Cumbria Ward – The Cottage in the Wood, Whinlatter
• Guest Accommodation of the Year – Number 43, Arnside
• Large Visitor Attraction of the Year – The World of Beatrix Potter – Bowness
• Small Visitor Attraction of the Year – Lake District Coast Aquarium, Maryport
• Sustainable Tourism Award – Elder Grove, Ambleside
• Large Hotel of the Year – Armathwaite Hall Country House Hotel and Spa, Bassenthwaite
• Small Hotel of the Year – Overwater Hall, Keswick
• The Lady Inglewood Award for Training & Development – Roundthorn Country House, Penrith
• Tourism Experience of the Year – Cumbrian Heavy Horses, Millom
• Holiday Park of the Year – Skelwith Fold Caravan Park, Ambleside and Woodclose Park, Kirkby Lonsdale
• Tourism Event of the Year – Great North Swim, Windermere
• Business Tourism Award – North Lakes Hotel, Penrith
• The Sheila Hensman Award for Outstanding Customer Service – Alan Gillon, Learning and Access Officer, The Beacon, Whitehaven
• Self-catering Holiday of the Year – Tottergill Farm Cottages, Brampton
• Access for All Tourism Award – The Beacon, Whitehaven
One of Britain’s biggest and most innovative seasons of outdoor arts events will take place across Cumbria again this spring and summer, set against the county’s beautiful and varied landscape and heritage.
This year’s Lakes Alive programme of events will run from 29 April to 5 September. It is Cumbria’s unique contribution to the Legacy Trust UK programme, which was set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.
The mainly free shows will include modern circus, dramatic outdoor theatre, contemporary dance and exciting, fiery processions.
Lakes Alive is created and directed by Kendal Arts International with Manchester International Arts. Julie Tait, the director of Kendal Arts International, says: “Lakes Alive is an ambitious four–year Cumbria–wide programme. Last year we set ourselves the objective of making the county a centre of excellence for street arts and we are already well on the way to making that a reality.
“Over 75,000 attended the events in our first year and by 2012 we will have brought at least £4 million of new arts spending into the county. We’re very excited by this year’s programme. As well as the top UK acts, Lakes Alive in 2010 will feature work by outdoor arts companies from across the world including Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Austria, India and Australia.”
There will be a chance to get a taste of Lakes Alive ahead of the full season at the Welcoming the Light event in Carlisle on Saturday 13 March, as part of Illuminating Hadrian’s Wall. A fiery parade will be accompanied by street artists and musicians and led by the incredible Heliosphere balloon with a performer suspended beneath it performing aerial acrobatics.
The Lakes Alive season will formally open in the atmospheric ruins of Furness Abbey near Barrow from 29 April to 2 May, with evening performances of a new show created by critically-acclaimed South Asian Dance Company, Akademi. The show has been specially commissioned by Lakes Alive.
A series of events across the May half term holidays will start with a thrilling outdoor animation festival in Whitehaven showcasing the town’s historic harbour on 29 and 30 May, including a dramatic procession with fire, light and giant illuminated fish by Spanish artists Sarruga.
From 3 to 5 June We Built This City will give people a chance to take part in a public construction extravaganza in the centre of Carlisle. Using thousands of big cardboard boxes and the energy and ingenuity of kids and families, Polyglot Theatre from Australia will help build a magnificent city.
Accompanied by live music buildings will go up, be pulled down, be redesigned, extended, walked through and jumped on, and reconstructed. At the end of the day, everybody can have fun knocking down and squashing the whole city into a recyclable heap of cardboard rubble.
In the south of the county Barrow will welcome some of the best and most exciting modern circus acts from Britain and overseas from 4 to 6 June. Zircus Plus, a unique International Circus Festival, will put on an amazing show at several locations across the town.
On 23 and 24 July German group Theater Titanick, one of Europe’s leading outdoor performance companies, will stage a stunning, large-scale show involving illusion, fire, water, music and dance at Carlisle Castle.
From 28-30 July a number of Cumbrian woodlands will play host to an afternoon of shows that have been specially created for woods or with a woodland theme. Into the Woods at Grizedale, Whinlatter and Talkin Tarn will provide an afternoon of outdoor family adventure with a difference.
Also during the summer holidays (dates TBC), The Cabaret of Dr Caligari, a show created especially for Lakes Alive in 2009, will tour towns in West Cumbria providing an afternoon of cabaret with music, dancing, comedy and spectacle for a family audience. The chaotic Dr Caligari conjures oddities, eccentrics and acrobats out of thin air to entertain the audience, but once out of the box they refuse to disappear!
On Sunday 1 August in Penrith there will be a new international street festival featuring puppetry, strolling characters, comic creations and more from across the globe.
On 30 August highly respected French artists Commandos Percu will stage a dazzling extravaganza of sound, fire, light and colour at Maryport.
The season of events will culminate in Mintfest, one of the country’s largest street arts festivals, which takes place in Kendal at the gateway to the Lakes. Running from 2 to 5 September the festival will include a host of the very best street artists from across the world, including new work commissioned by the UK street arts consortium Without Walls.
Further details about all the shows will be available at www.lakesalive.org.
Lakes Alive is one of three annual programmes commissioned for WE PLAY, the Northwest cultural legacy programme for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. WE PLAY is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games. The project is led by the Arts Council England Northwest on behalf of a new regional partnership. Lakes Alive is sponsored by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and has also received funding from Arts Council England and the Northern Rock Foundation.
Moira Swinbank, the Chief Executive of Legacy Trust UK, says: “Legacy Trust UK is delighted to be funding Lakes Alive, which has already made a considerable impact on Cumbria’s cultural landscape and will continue to build a lasting cultural legacy for the area with the fantastic line-up for the 2010 programme.
Peter Mearns, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications at the NWDA said: “Lakes Alive has fast become a much anticipated programme of world-class events, attracting visitors to Cumbria from far and wide. It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase the region to a wide audience and adds a whole new dimension to the visitor experience. 2010 promises to deliver another unique collection of events which will no doubt provide a great boost to the region’s visitor economy.”
The Lakes Alive season is also supported by a wide range of other organisations including every council in Cumbria, the Lake District National Park, Cumbria Tourism, Carlisle Renaissance, Carlisle Tourism Partnership, Barrow Regeneration, the Forestry Commission and companies including K Village.
A small island off the coast of Barrow-in-Furness has received a £280,000 grant to build a visitor centre.
The centre will be housed in the Grade II listed Ship Inn on Piel Island. It will provide information about local heritage and orientation for walkers.
The money comes from the government funded Sea Change programme, a scheme to invigorate England’s seaside towns through investment in culture and heritage.
Piel Island has an area of just 50 acres and is home to little more than the Ship Inn, an 18th century pub, and Piel Castle, managed by English Heritage. The landlord of the pub is known as the ‘King of Piel’ and runs the island.
In the summer the island can be reached by a ferry operating from Roa Island.
Work on a multi-million pound facelift of Barrow town centre commenced yesterday.
The scheme, costing around £4.13 million is being funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) via Barrow Regeneration (formerly Barrow Vision) to the tune of around £3.7 million, with Cumbria County Council contributing £252,000 and Barrow Borough Council £160,000.
The project, which is being divided into seven phases and is set to be completed by September 2010, will see Dalton Road, Portland Walk, Cavendish Street, Scott Street, Dalkeith Street and William Street all revamped.
The scheme will feature the building of natural sandstone pavements with new street furniture, red granite bollards and benches, stainless steel bollards, lamp columns and litter bins.
New drainage and road gullies are also being installed as well as street lights and LED lighting ducts that will illuminate granite bollards, seats and tree pits.
The construction of new sandstone carriageways will also be carried out and Cavendish Street, Scott Street and Dalkeith Street will get a new road surface and road markings.
Cumbria County Council has overall responsibility for delivering the scheme and is working in partnership with Barrow Borough Council, Amey – who are carrying out the works, Capita Symonds – who have designed the scheme, and Barrow Regeneration – who have provided funding via the NWDA.
Councillor Tony Markley, Cumbria County Council’s cabinet member for highways and economic development, said:
Bob Pointing, Programme Director for Barrow Regeneration, said ‘As Barrow gears up to become a major business and tourism destination in the North West, it is vital we have an attractive town centre which not only makes local people proud, but changes the perception of Barrow among inward investors and visitors alike. This £4m scheme is a major statement of faith in the future of the town from all the partners involved. Along with The Waterfront Barrow-in-Furness development, which is being led by Barrow Regeneration, we are all committed to delivering a bold new image of Barrow which brings a fresh sparkle to this fiercely proud and important town.’
To ensure any disruption to businesses and shoppers is kept to a minimum work will be suspended from November 30 until January 4 2010 – the main Christmas shopping period.
Ulverston’s brilliant Lantern Procession takes place this coming Saturday evening.
Roads in the town centre will be closed between 7 pm and 10.30 pm.
Thankfully, the town’s street drinking ban will be lifted between 7.45 pm and 10.30 pm.
Heritage Open Days allow visitors free access to properties that normally charge an entrance fee or are not usually open to the public.
The event starts tomorrow and runs until Sunday September 13.
Hundreds of attractions and properties in the North West are taking part. For more details visit the official Heritage Open Days website.
Highlights include:
Barrow
Which?’s Good Food Guide 2010 was published yesterday.
Restaurants from the North West that made the list of the top 50 restaurants in the UK were:
13 L’Enclume, Cartmel, near Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria
23 Holbeck Ghyll, Windermere, Cumbria
26 Simon Radley at the Chester Grosvenor, Chester, Cheshire
30 Fraiche, Oxton, Wirral
49 Ramsons, Ramsbottom, near Bury, Greater Manchester
The Grange-over-Sands Tourist Information Centre (TIC) has been saved from closure by local volunteers. From today it will be run as a not-for-profit, community-run organisation.
Until today the centre had been funded and operated by South Lakeland District Council. In February they decided they could not afford to fund the centre beyond the summer and announced its closure.
3 years ago the volunteers took control of Coniston Tourist Information Centre from the Lake District National Park Authority.
Philip Johnston, director of the Coniston TIC said, ‘Running a community TIC isn’t easy but you do get there in the end. It’s like any other business, it is attention to detail that will make it succeed and selling people what they want. We are open every day of the year apart from Christmas and Boxing Day. Sometime taking the tourist information centre out of local authority control means that the community goodwill returns and they respond with a Dunkirk-spirit. It means people become more involved in their TIC and it is seen as more of a community service than a council service.’
Visitors looking for a cheap place to stay in North West England next year (or indeed the rest of the UK, Ireland or Spain) should take note that Travelodge today launched an amazing offer on budget rooms.
The budget hotel chain is offering 50,000 rooms at only £12. The rate applies for stays between January 1 and April 1 2010. Rooms are also available from £19 (book 21 days ahead) and from £29 (book 7 days ahead).
To take advantage of this amazing offer, visit this page on their website.