Afternoon at Avenham Park

Hi Everyone! I hope you've all had a fabulous week :) I've been spending more time with my friends later which has been wonderful. A bunch of us met up on Tuesday night for a get together and night out. We always have such an awesome time pre-drinking and playing some games, including Quiplash. Who else has played this fun video game!? It always ends up comparible to Cards Against Humanity, especially with alcohol added into the equation. I then spent Wednesday sleeping off my hangover, complaining and watching random youtube channels with my friends, such as this interesting one by three urban explorers. I'd love to go and explore an old hospital or an abandoned theme park some day! Anyhow on with today's post... last Saturday, my best friends & I decided to head to Avenham Park, a really pretty Victorian park in Preston city. I've only ever been to the park once before and didn't get to explore as much last time, so I had such a good time! I took a few photographs to show you guys. Enjoy :) 

So, before I show off how beautiful this park is... I thought I'll tell you all a little information about it.  Avenham Park is a Grade 2 listed Natural Heritage park, dating back to the Victorian Era. It has some historical sites in the park such a gorgeous building called The Belvedere and an awesome viaduct over the River Ribble. Also in the park is a pretty fountain, a Japanese Park and a cafe :) It's a lovely place for a day out. We were hoping that the weather would be nicer since we had planned to have a picnic, however it rained on and off all morning so we had to change our plans. It was still great fun to walk around, exploring the grounds, admire everyones adorable dogs and play Pokemon Go. I finally caught my first Growlithe! 

I saw so many wonderful things on my trip to Avenham Park, including a lovely little rose garden with so many colours and varieties of rose, and lots of Iris' surrounding the Japanese Garden. The garden itself was just so lovely, and there were fish living in the pond! I spotted my first ever Yarn Bombing just by the Pokestop near the Japanese Garden, and it made me wish that I knew how to knit so that I could do my very own Yarn Bombing. On my day out, I also learnt some of the history surrounding an old listed building that is visible from the centre of the park. I found it that it was once an Orphange (St Joseph's was it's name) for young girls run by Catholic nuns. Once I got home and did some research, I also found out that it was a hospital too and has a lot of history attached to it. It's been abandoned for a long time and urban explorers like to visit it :) After we'd finished at the park, we handed into the city centre to go to Wetherspoon's, and I tripped up and stained my ankle because I'm ridiculously clumsy haha. Then hung out at my friend's place in Preston for a few hours, before having a good sing along in the car on the drive back to my hometown. 

I hope you all enjoyed this photography based post :) I absolutely love parks that are located in cities. It's such a lovely contrast to be able to walk from the hustle and bustle of a city with traffic and people and buildings, to a gorgeous, serene parkland that looks like it belongs in a rural setting. For the rest of the month, there's going to be a post just like this one each week as I am taking part in the Wildlife Trust's '30 Days Wild' Challenge, which encourage people to get out into nature everyday, to appreciate it and explore it, to make the most of this beautiful time of year and educate themselves about the natural world. I thought I'd document the challenge on here. Is anyone else doing 30 Days Wild too?

Thankyou for reading!

  ♥

Have any of my lovely readers been to a park or nature reserve or forest lately? 

I'd love to hear all about it! What wildlife did you see there? 

Did you enjoy this? Have a read of these related posts: 

| Earth Day 2017 | Dyserth Waterfall | My First Geocache Find |

 Follow me over on Instagram to see snippets of my 30 Days Wild Challenge!