Shaun in the Heart of Kent - Maidstone

Date of visit - 18/07/2024

Shaun in the Heart of Kent is an art display, featuring over 100 Shaun the Sheep sculptures that have all been uniquely decorated and dotted in and around Maidstone for people to have a bit of fun and see how many you can find. The trail is scheduled to run until August 30th, 2024

The trail is to raise awareness of the Heart of Kent Hospice and is partnered by Wild in Art, Aardman and Maidstone Borough Council. There is an app to download, with a map, showing you the location of each Shaun. Each sculpture has its own unique number which you can enter into the app to record your progress.

"Heart of Kent Hospice provides free, specialist care and support for adults living with a terminal illness and their loved ones, so they can have the best quality of life, for as long as they live."

As the parent of someone with a lifelong condition, I understand there is a good possibility that at some point in the future he may require the assistance of something similar to Heart of Kent - granted our Little One's conditions aren't terminal, or life threatening at present, but we know he will need life long assistance from good people - especially when we're not here!

We realised we couldn't do all the sculptures in one day, as the Shaun's are dotted around Maidstone, with many in the Town Centre, a selection in Moat Park and the area we chose for part one of our trail, the area along the river from the Archbishop's Palace in Maidstone to Whatman Park.

This was another of those, "got to think about what we are doing" walks, as the beginning of the walk was all alongside the river Medway. Now, as I have said before, each to their own - but for us we know that our Little One loves, and that should be in capitals LOVES water.

We parked at Lockmeadow, on the other side of the river to the Archbishop's Palace, and the first result of the day - the parking was FREE to blue badge holders. Now it's not that often that I can say that, about local freebies, but Maidstone Council have made their controlled car parks free to blue badger's (that's someone holding a blue badge, and not a blue animal, obviously!).

We started Little One in his buggy, with a view to keeping him there, safe from the attraction of water, but with a view to letting him loose once we got over the other side of the river into Whatman Park.

Right, here's another one of those bits of information - which is a counter-intuitive positive/negative. Maidstone Council runs a Community Toilet Scheme - sounds grand, but what it actually means is they don't provide many public conveniences, as they rely on businesses to allow you to do - well, your business!

This is in theory, a good scheme, but in reality it negates the council from providing facilities that should be seen as the norm. To be fair, the scheme is designed as such that the companies involved don't expect you to pay to use their facilities - but I am guessing many do, just because it's what you would do, isn't it?

Consequently there aren't any toilets in Whatman Park, although the council website appears to indicate there is a disabled toilet, operated with a Radar key - but we couldn't find it!

What we did discover is that what the park lacked in toilets, it made up for it with play areas, there was a play area for smaller children (Jolly Rogers), a skateboard park, and a play area for older children, with slides, a zip wire, a trye swing oh! and more slides...

On the day, we found 19 of 109 Sheep, which doesn't sound a lot, but it was all of the sheep in the area we covered - we will be going back to Maidstone Town Centre to find a load more - then hopefully the Moat Park area to fill in the blanks!

We enjoyed our day out, it was a nice easy walk, ignoring the attraction of water, and had some good facilities, save for the lack of a loo, with plenty of benches to sit for an impromptu picnic! Our intention is to do the Town Centre and Moat Park areas before the trail closes on August 30th.

Watch this space for an update and more pictures!