A visit home to the north-east of England gave me the opportunity to go to the strangely named attraction called "Northumberlandia".
It sits on the former site of an open cast coal mine. These mines leave a terrible scar on the landscape.
But now thanks to the imagination of renowned American landscape gardener Charles Jencks it looks a whole lot better.
If you had not worked it already, it depicts a reclining woman set into the landscape. It was created in 46 acres of reclaimed land near Cramlington Northumberland in the north east of England.
The area around Cramlington bears many scars from the process of open cast mining. The neighbouring Shotton Surface mine, a deep open cast mine can be seen from the top on the figure. It's a reminder of what the landscape would have looked like before the area was reclaimed and landscaped.
The centrepiece of the park is a stunning human landform sculpture of a reclining woman. Made of 1.5 million tonnes of rock, clay, and soil, she is 100 feet high and a quarter of a mile long with a mix of water and stone features that define her figure.
When I visited the feature had not long been finished and it all looked a bit raw but with time the man-made features and the nature around it will blur together and the landscape will evolve over time. The grasses will grow, the water features will mature and the figure will grow into the landscape.
The intention is for it not to be a rigid manicured feature but too mature and change with the seasons and following generations. If you visit just look over the fence at the neighbouring surface mine you see just how much work has been done which has to be applauded.
Coming from the north-east of England myself I can remember driving past lots of these ugly scars on the landscape that always seem to be dug in places of outstanding natural beauty. I guess some aerial footage would have given a better viewpoint to see the full figure, I will have to buy a drone to do that!
Northumberlandia has been built by the Banks Group as part of the restoration of the adjacent Shotton surface coal mine. An opportunity to create a spectacular art form, which otherwise would not be constructed, whilst recovering much-needed coal for UK energy generation.
This project is known as restoration first – taking an extra piece of land donated by the landowner, the Blagdon Estate, adjacent to the mine and providing a new landscape for the community to enjoy while the mine is still operational. The £3 million cost of the project has been privately funded by the Banks Group and the Blagdon Estate.
Northumberlandia. In the shape of a reclining woman. Photographed by Richard Clark
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