In the Netherlands whoever wins a contract to build a motorway must provide artwork as part of the deal, which is why there are several enormous concrete elephants by the side of the motorway near where my brother lives. They are much bigger than lifesize. I took this photo as we were driving past on our way back home so it isn’t the best, in fact most of the photos I took are quite blurry.
The one below is of a rusty ship, rust seems to be quite a theme because there were a couple of rusty houses too.
Below is a photo taken from the motorway on the road back to the Hook of Holland.
And the last three I took from the ferry as we were sailing back to Harwich from the Hook of Holland. It was a flat calm the whole way, much smoother than a train journey, which I found a bit disappointing as I do enjoy a good heaving sea but it does seem to make a lot of people heave in a different way altogether so the lack of rough seas probably came as welcome to most of the passengers.
Those elephants would be a very bizarre sight for sure!
Peggy Ann,
Yes but they are somehow cheery although a bit grey, they should have opted for rainbow colours!
I’m wondering what arcane and esoteric purpose will be attributed to the elephants etc by the archaeologists of the distant future!
Valerie in NZ,
I imagine they will decide that the elephants denote high status rituals have been going on around that area!
The M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow has its fair share of “Artworks”, but the Kelpies must be among the best artworks though they flank the canal rather than the motorway. Haven’t seen them close up yet, but from the M9 or is it M90, they look stunning! I wonder why elephants, but then Edinburgh has giraffes outside the Omnicentre at the top of Leith Walk.
Evee,
Yes I don’t know who pays for those artworks though, not the road builders anyway – probably us. I’ve only seen the Kelpies from a distance too, we’ll have to make time to stop there. I’ve never seen the giraffes.