Shaun in the City: Bristol

Having managed to find all 50 Shaun the Sheep sculptures when they were in London, we couldn’t resist the challenge to complete the set and find the ones in Bristol too. The first weekend after they arrived in Bristol, we headed off to try and find as many as we could.

There are 70 different Shaun sculptures to find and nine different trails to complete, although one of these (Sheep Drive) is not on the app. The map shows the distance covered by each trail, the estimated time to complete the trail and the level of difficulty. Some of the Shauns are inside different venues and it is advisable to check the opening times before trying to find these ones (as we discovered to our cost on the first day of the trail!)

We started our hunt at the Mall in Cribbs Causeway where we found our first sheep – Fab-Ewe-Lous, followed by Bee-dazzled. Jessica had her face painted as ‘Sparkles the Unicorn’ in the Shaun the Sheep shop where we also found Shrek Sheep, a whole flock of brightly coloured Shauns painted as part of the schools project and a Gromit. We couldn’t resist the urge to pick up a few souvenirs – a Yeoman of the Baard figurine, two cuddly mini Shaun keyrings for the girls, a notepad for me and a T-shirt for Jessica (sadly they weren’t available in Sophie’s size).

Our hunt on Saturday focused on the Shauns outside of the city centre and given our limited time scale, we decided to drive to each of the sheep. Naturally we had to find Sparkles the Unicorn early on while Jessica still had her face painted! We took a short break from our sheep hunt to spend time wandering about St Werburgh’s City Farm (where another Shaun, Primrose, was located, completing our first trail – Farmyard Flock) and enjoy some lunch in the café there.

After lunch we headed towards Clifton to find some of the sheep on the Brunel Trail before heading south of the river to focus on the Southbank Trail. It was slightly frustrating that we were unable to visit a couple of the sheep we were hoping to tick off the list that day meaning we had to go back over parts of our route the next day. One of these was on a hotel terrace which was closed due to an event taking place and the other was inside a swimming pool which had closed for the day when we got there. Still, we had a successful day overall, managing to tick off 25 Shauns in total and completing two of the trails.

Having spent a sunny Saturday driving around to find the sheep, Sunday – our day for exploring the city centre trails on foot – was very rainy. Thank goodness for waterproofs – although ours had definitely started to reach their limit by the time we stopped for lunch at the Galleries shopping centre where one of the Shauns, Cecilia, was located. Thankfully the sun started to emerge after lunch and our journey around the city centre was much more pleasant as a result! Jessica was very excited to spot the Bagpuss Shaun as she loves watching Bagpuss on DVD and Sophie loved spotting all the “sheee!” as she called them too! By the time we were ready to call it a day and head home again, we had managed to bring our total to 62 – with five more trails completed.

We couldn’t quite resist the temptation to find the last three sheep on the Sheep Drive trail – Two Hoots, Melonie and Buddleia on the way home though! 65 sheep down, just 5 more left to find. In the meantime though, we went on holiday to the Isle of Man where we completed our Olympic gold postbox challenge.

Whilst Bristol wasn’t really on our way home from the Isle of Man, it seemed like a good opportunity to head back and finish our sheep hunt. The last five Shauns – Arabian Lights, Baaack to the Drawing Board, From Dusk ‘til Shaun and Rex, were all quite close to each other. As it didn’t take us very long to find them, it meant that we could have a slightly more leisurely day out than previously and catch up with a friend of mine too.

During our sheep hunt in London, we relied on the app to help us find the sheep, although this time we had managed to pick up a map in the Shaun the Sheep shop which made it a lot easier. The app was more useful for finding the sheep once we were near them – a couple of the ones in parks were a little tricky to find at first. The app was a big hit with Jessica who loved making the sheep “light up” as we found them (or “light down” if we hadn’t yet found them!) One of my favourite things about the app was being able to collect trophies along the way – for crossing a bridge during the hunt, finding a certain number of Shauns, finding a Shaun at a certain time of day etc. – and we were determined to collect all of them!

 

If you’re around in Bristol over the summer, I would definitely recommend following one of the trails. The sheep will be there until 31st August but if you miss them, there are two opportunities to see the whole flock of 120 sheep together in September.   They will be at The Mall at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol from 12th – 20th September (timed entry tickets will be available on the website later in August) and in Covent Garden Piazza in London from 24th – 27th September.