10-Nov-2023
Today we caught the bus to Derby. From Milford the journey takes about 30 minutes.
Side-note 1: Derbyshire -- or at least the bit we're in -- seems admirably provisioned with bus services. They are frequent, and (at the moment at least) charge a flat fare of GBP 2.
Side-note 2: Careful readers of this blog will remember we visited Derby twice during our 2021-22 UK sojourn -- once to have our first covid booster, and once to have my booster entered into my UK record. It was nice today, therefore, to go purely for fun.
Here's a record of our little tour:
The Cathedral is currently playing host to the Moon:
Entitled Museum of the Moon, the artwork is by Luke Jerram. It's made of fabric, with a continuous air flow to keep the surface taut; it's 7 metres in diameter, and it weighs 40 kg. It looks disconcertingly solid... The model is complemented by a mixed soundtrack featuring music, snatches of astronauts' conversations, and so on.
There's lots else of interest in this Cathedral, though:
We saw a fair tranche of Wright's work later when we visited the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. It's wonderful. He specializes in extraordinarily dramatic contrasts between light and shade, and he renders his subjects with such realism that they leap off the canvas.
This collection is probably the highlight. But there's lots else of interest in this museum. For a start, they have real mummies! And I also really liked the attempts to interrogate the provenance of the articles the museum has acquired over the years, and to engage with the local community.
It's definitely a very interesting city, and would repay a follow-up visit one day.