Cotswolder

Bath is one of my favorite places in the world, and this summer it is going to be even better than usual. Starting on May 19 there will 100 pig statues, life size and individually decorated, all over Bath - King Bladud’s Pigs in Bath. In October the pigs will be sold at auction.

There have been similar projects in other towns. The Cow Parade has been done in many cities. In Germany they did Storks on the Danube (Flickr). The Trail of Painted Ponies started in Santa Fe in 2001.

Pigs were chosen for Bath because of the legend of King Bladud and his pigs who discovered the natural hot springs in Bath.

Kaffe Fassett is one of the artists making a pig. Fassett is an American, from Big Sur in California, who moved to England decades ago and “revolutionized” needlepoint and knitting in the 80s. His family owns the wonderful Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur. This is a great place to stop for lunch when doing the California coast drive. They also run the Phoenix shop beside the restaurant which sells many Kaffe Fassett things. They used to have a couch that he had covered in needlepoint, but it was not there the last time we visited.

The money raised by the Pig Project goes to the Two Tunnels Project which I had not heard of until today. This is a project to restore a four mile path - involving an old railway track, a viaduct and two tunnels - to connect the center of Bath with the Sustrans path NCN 24 (Sustainable Transport - National Cycle Network route 24) south of Bath near Milford. From there you connect to many biking and hiking trails. The route will be for bicyclists and walkers. One of the tunnels is one mile long and goes beneath Combe Down (high area south of Bath). See a detailed map.

Currently you can walk from the Center of Bath to Milford, but the path is longer and more difficult. With the Two Tunnels Project the path will be shorter and level.

I found out about this event when I was writing about Knitting Socks for my Views from the Slow Lane blog. I was reading Kaffe Fassett’s website to find out about his sock wool, and there was the information about the Pigs in Bath!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Bath, News and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.