lights

GLIMMERS of light are much needed in gloomy January.

But to feel brighter in the bleakest months, the Lanterns Of The Wild light trail at Twycross Zoo, in Leicestershire, will bring a little sparkle to your day

Dazzling until February 22, more than 2,000 lanterns have been strung along a mile-long walking trail.

Keen to check out this slice of winter magic, I visited with my husband Simon and sons Wilf, eight, and Jasper, six.

We were blown away by the epic-scale of the attraction, where every step is a jolt of joy.

As someone who has dragged their little ones to illuminations around the country: this is the best.

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You start at a gathering of cosy food and drink stalls, stocked with churros, mulled wine and chips with jumbo pigs in blankets.

Beginning the walk, through a canopy of trees lit with sparkling lights, we were instantly surrounded by jewel hued lantern animals and fauna.

The scope of the attraction is no mean feat, as there are over 500 species of animals and plants depicted.

Rounding the corner we are in the first of ten zones: The Gruffalo Wood and see lanterns inspired by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s beloved book.

Seeing the wonder on the boys’ faces was up there as one of my top parenting moments.

The lanterns are a work of art, they took 99,000 hours to create and use 25,000 bulbs.

They were crafted on site and hand-painted by more than 30 Chinese craftsmen from Zigong, the lantern capital of China.

My husband wasn’t convinced walking around “some lights” on a night where the thermometer didn’t hit 5C was a great idea.

But he was a quick convert to the magic, especially a field of Van Gogh-inspired sunflowers crafted from lanterns.

From here we head into The North American Wilds followed by Polar Realms zones, filled with lit-up installations of wolves, bears and a gigantic Mount Rushmore installation.

We warmed back up with hot drinks at the festive warmers tent half way through the walk then continued to more themed zones, which were increasingly spectacular.

We all agreed the best was the Tropical Reef, where the path wound round mesmerising jellyfish suspended in boughs of trees and a stunning shoal of fish, seemingly hovering in thin air while turtles and their babies flank you on all sides.

As we crossed the last zone, African Savannah – teeming with lit up crocs and other beasts, my hard-to-impress eight-year-old turned to me with eyes shining and proclaimed the evening had been a ten out of ten.

If you’re looking for a beacon of happiness in the coldest months, Lanterns Of The Wild is the place to get yourself illuminated.

A HUGE festival that is completely free to visit will land in the UK next month.

Bristol Light Festival will return to Bristol for 10 nights next month, between February 19 and 28.

One of the headline events recently announced will be an installation called The Lite Series.

Visitors will be able to see a number of illuminated hot air balloons gathered by Cameron Balloons, which when fired will create a burst of colour in the balloon.

The more people who fire the hot air balloons, the brighter they get and more sound plays from them.

Jess Siggers, marketing manager at Cameron Balloons, said: “Bristol’s skyline has been shaped by our balloons for generations, so we’re thrilled to bring that heritage back down to earth in an entirely new way for Bristol Light Festival.

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“The Lite Series invites everyone to feel the magic of ballooning up close.

“It’s playful, it’s interactive and above all, it celebrates the engineering and imagination that Bristol is famous for.”

Another exhibit at the festival will be an installation by artist Liz West, who will transform Cabot Circus’ multi-storey car park into a light show.

The entire festival will sprawl across the city and will host a number of events for the public to get involved in.

Other details about the festival will be announced in the coming weeks but in previous years activities and events have included a Neon Kids Rave.

The rave was free of charge and kids even ate for free.

Other family-friendly activities have included art clubs as well.

It isn’t just about families though, as there are plenty of adult activities on as well such as paint in the dark, dine in the dark and run club events.

And there are usually photography and walking tours.

A number of venues around the city usually have offers too, such as cheap drinks.

Last year’s festival brought in £11million to the city, with visitors spending £9.4million across the event.

Many people have taken to social media to express their excitement for the festival.

One person commented: “We’re coming up from Cornwall again for the festival ! Can’t wait was brilliant last year !”

Another added: “I can’t wait to return to epic Bristol.”

A third person said: “One of the highlights of Winter – can’t wait to see what spectacular light you’ll be bringing to the darker months!”

If you are looking for somewhere to stay in the city, there is a spa hotel with an award-winning restaurant and salt sauna.

Or you could head to another hotel with a sauna, that is opposite the historic railway station.

And for inspiration on what to do when you are there, the city has street art tours, 19th century hotels and ‘top-notch’ cuisine.

In other festival news, pop megastar in talks to play massive UK festival comeback show nine years after last British concert.

Plus, new farm-themed festival to launch in the UK and Jeremy Clarkson is headlining – with live music and tractor shows.

Rangers were far from great, but they were dogged and they hung in there and when their chances came they buried them. Youssef Chermiti, of all people, was the chief tormentor. In nine pulsating minutes he doubled his total for the season and wrote his name into a new kind of Rangers pantheon – from zero to hero.

Nancy spoke later and in trying to talk his way through the latest submission from his team he only reaffirmed his sense of distance from footballing reality.

He mentioned that Celtic “deserved more” than a 3-1 loss, when they didn’t. Not taking their chances when they had them was on Celtic, not anybody else. Deserve had nothing to do with it. It was the Celtic board who created a situation where their manager was left with scant options upfront. From meagre rations, he plumped for Johnny Kenny. It didn’t work out.

The Frenchman made some comments about the loss not being about players and tactics. “It’s about moments, it’s about details,” he said, as if moments and details exist in a parallel universe from players and managers.

“It’s not about myself,” he said. Well, it is, but to a point. It’s also about the players he has confused and bewildered with his ill-fitting shape and the ideology he refuses to alter no matter how befuddled things become.

On Friday, he made much of how difficult it’s been to introduce his system without a pre-season to bed-in his ideas. He didn’t have a pre-season to work with his players and he didn’t have a transfer window to bring in more players that could play his system. And yet he pressed on with the system regardless. Stubbornness? Arrogance? Naivety? All three at once?

Danny Rohl went into Rangers, surveyed what he had and got pragmatic. Like Nancy, he needs new players, too. Many of them. But he’s found a way to drag his team forward when his counterpart has only succeeded in taking his players backwards in the pursuit of something that only he can see.

The soft progress achieved under Martin O’Neill has been sacrificed on the altar of “process” and some self-regarding notion that Nancy is a visionary who’s building a footballing monument.

The crumbling cliff edge is just metres away. An automatic blind, which I can operate without getting out of bed, rises to reveal an ocean view: the dramatic storm-surging North Sea with great black-backed gulls circling nearby and a distant ship on the horizon. A watery gold sunrise lights the clouds and turbulent grey water.

I’m the first person to sleep in the new Kraken lodge at Still Southwold, a former farm in Easton Bavents on the Suffolk coast. It’s a stylish wooden cabin, one of a scattering of holiday lets in an area prone to aggressive coastal erosion. The owner, Anne Jones, describes the challenges of living on a coast that is rapidly receding in the face of climate-exacerbated storms: the waves have eroded more than 40 hectares (100 acres), and the family business “is no longer a viable farm”. Instead, it is home to low-carbon cottages and cabins, “designed to be movable when the land they stand on is lost to the sea”. The latest projects include a sea-view sauna and a ‘dune hut’ on the beach for reflexology treatments “with the sea and waves as the backdrop”.

By train, bus and on foot, I’m here for the beaches, marshes, heathland and villages. Arriving at sunset, Still Southwold feels wild and remote, with lapwings flapping through the twilight like huge bats, but Southwold pier is just an easy 10-minute walk away. Heading to the bus stop next morning, I notice plumes of spray behind the beach huts. Waves are crashing over the concrete promenade near the pier. There’s a contrast between the brightly painted row of huts, with their candy stripes and stained-glass dolphins, and the heaving, uncontainable ocean behind them. It’s a worrying sign, as the path I’ve chosen today is only walkable at low tide. Erosion means the official coast path between Lowestoft and Southwold has been mostly rerouted inland and the soft cliff edges are perilous.

A 20-minute bus ride from the end of Pier Avenue brings me to Kessingland, a village just south of Lowestoft. Heading for the coast, with supplies from Bushells Bakery, I soon reach Rider Haggard Lane. The author of King Solomon’s Mines, H Rider Haggard, spent several summers in a holiday home on the cliffs in Kessingland, where he was visited by his friend Rudyard Kipling. Haggard planted marram grass to stop the sea encroaching and, climbing down steps on to the beach, I find there’s still a wide marram-grass-covered band of shingle. The sandy cliffs include layers of clay and fossil traces of steppe mammoths, hippos and sabre-toothed cats.

At the far end of the beach, near flood management works, a Natural England sign warns that the beach-walking route from here to Southwold is impassable near Easton Bavents. The owners of Still Southwold give visitors a code for a gate between their clifftop farm and Covehithe Beach. I press on, looking warily at the mess of washed-up kelp and driftwood that winter waves have hurled on to the land.

A hardy hiker is heading the other way in shorts, with a battered rucksack. He’s one of only three people I meet all day, and I check the state of the beach ahead. Is it safe? Is it walkable? “There’s a storm surge,” says the hiker. “The tide’s been much higher than expected. The wind’s from the north and the North Sea’s wider at the top than the bottom – it’s like someone blowing on a teacup.” The image stays with me all day, intensified by the milky-brown colour of the water, as the giant-tea-cooling waves roll into the sandy shore.

Benacre Broad is unexpectedly lovely. A loop of woods and marshes surrounds a beautiful and fragile lake, cut off from the sea by a shifting bank of sand and shingle, decked with salt-bleached roots and tree trunks like a natural sculpture garden. The coast here has retreated more than 500 metres in the last couple of centuries, and salt water now often breaches the bird-rich lake. I eat my sandwich in the sheltered bird hide, listening for resident warblers in the reeds, but hear only the roar of the sea.

The atmospheric ruins of a huge medieval church stand on the cliffs above Benacre. St Andrew’s, Covehithe is now just the tall 14th-century tower and a smaller thatched building, under decaying arches, with the old octagonal carved font inside. At the end of the lane from church to coast, a red warning sign says “Footpath Closed” where the old coastal path ends abruptly on the collapsed cliff edge.

Later, the warm bar of the Swan in Southwold is extra welcome after a chilly day on windswept beaches. There’s port-laced mulled wine on offer, as well as creamy Baron Bigod brie from the Fen Farm Dairy or slow-cooked Blythburgh pork with apple.

Next day, I meet friends in the scone-scented Bloom cafe on Southwold High Street and we stroll across Southwold Common to Walberswick. We’re following a section of the nightjar waymarks of the Sandlings Walk, a long-distance hike through surviving fragments of heathland between Southwold and Ipswich. Since medieval times, 90% of what was once a continuous stretch of Suffolk heath has been lost.

The last autumn colours are glowing across Walberswick Common, with its bracken and birch trees. We head back along boardwalks by the Dunwich River, remembering the drowned town of Dunwich not far away under the waves, a kind of Suffolk Atlantis. The wind has dropped today and the marsh is full of noises: the sudden trilling of a Cetti’s warbler and the rare song of a bearded tit from the miles of whispering reedbeds. We cross the Blyth estuary by rowing boat ferry for lunch at the harbourside Sole Bay Fish Company, before heading back towards Southwold as the sun sets.

Accommodation was provided by Still Southwold (cabins from £617 for three nights) and transport by Greater Anglia (singles from Norwich to Lowestoft £10.10, advance singles from London to Lowestoft from £17).