Book Benches

We've had a couple of weeks off and because we're never ones to pass the opportunity for a scavenger hunt, we decided to spend a couple of days in London with my family, and go up to London to look for the National Literacy Trust's book benches. These are absolutely awesome - they each feature a different book and have been painted by various artists and illustrators and will be 'about town' until mid October, when they will be auctioned to raise money for the National Literacy Trust. There are four different trails and if you visit the website you can download maps and quizzes for them all and tick the benches off as you find them, which obviously appealed to my super geeky side!

That's Not My...Bench!

All the boys on the Paddington Bear bench

Because we were heading up to London with our massive pushchair and two small kids, we opted to start with the City Trail, which begins around Bank tube station, and then joins onto the Riverside Trail, which we didn't manage to complete, but we are hoping to go back towards the end of the month and look for some of the benches on the Bloomsbury trail (Sherlock Holmes, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and the Greenwich Trail (We're Going on a Bear Hunt). Each bench has a little blurb about the book/author and Benji adored looking at the back of each bench particularly, and hiding from me, Rhys and his Aunty Ruth (my sister, who came with us). There's not a lot more to write about this trip, so it will mostly be pictures now :-)

Benji (and headless aunty Ruth) on the Wind in the Willows bench,outside the Royal Exchange.

Benji and Mary Poppins, outside St Paul's Cathedral

Shakespeare bench, outside Shakespeare's Globe

While Ruth and I sat on the Paddington Bear bench and fed Sam, Rhys and Benji went off in search of a final two benches:

benji on the Julia Donaldson bench (his favourite) painted by Axel Scheffler

the Discworld bench, Rhys' favourite. 

Have you been to look for these? They appeal so much to my super geeky side, now we've started we feel like we have to go back and find the rest.