Taking Inspiration from Beacon Hill Country Park

Last Sunday we spent a lovely day at Beacon Hill Country Park in the heart of Leicestershire. Beacon Hill is located in Charnwood Forest and has a lovely combination of woodland walks, ponds, grassland and Beacon Hill itself which is the second highest point in Leicestershire. We had a lovely picnic and sat on top of Beacon Hill (which was once a Bronze Age hill fort), taking in the surrounding views whilst our little boy climbed the many rocks.

We began our walk around the Beacon Hill Country Park and our first observation was an amusing sight of this tree that was just refusing to give up...

Beacon Hill Tree

Continuing on our walk we came across this wonderful rock formation and commented how the profile was similar to a face. Later we discovered that it was in fact known as The Old Man of Beacon Hill!

Old man of Beacon Hill

We stopped at the natural play area, a secluded area created in 2010 with timber grown at Beacon Hill. Here we discovered many wooden sculptures, a maze and even a wooden train that we pretended to drive around the park.

Beacon Hill wood sculpture

We then continued our walk through the beacon plantations to the native tree collection. In 1994 8,000 trees were planted in the park with representatives of the 28 species of trees and shrubs native to the British Isles. We managed to get ourselves a little lost in this area and after finally making our way out walked back to the 802ft summit of Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill plantations

The fantastic landscape and views around Beacon Hill Country Park gave me the inspiration to make a couple of pendants this week. The first is my interpretation of where the sky meets the sea. Not that there is much sea around Beacon Hill, in fact it couldn’t be further from the sea; but there was plenty of blue sky to look at and that was the inspiration behind this piece.

Blue sea and sky necklace

The second pendant was inspired by the random patchwork of colours around Beacon Hill. From the colours of the trees and heath land to the views of far away buildings and fields; this was the inspiration behind this item. The pendant was actually formed by encasing small fragments of sea glass within the resin pendant. The photo does not really do the pendant justice as the fizziness and details of the sea glass within the pendant is quite beautiful.

Random sea glass necklace

A visit to Leicestershire wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Beacon Hill Country Park, the views are breath taking and each time you visit you are guaranteed to discover something new.

Mick