A couple of weeks ago we celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary (I know, but I was a child bride!) and we couldn’t think of anything better to do than to spend the afternoon at Jupiter Artland, which is an outdour sculpture park by Edinburgh. It was a hot day, and we hadn’t had any rain for quite a while but as you can see the Charles Jencks landforms below are holding up quite well to the drought.

In the distance you can just see the three bridges which span the Firth of Forth in the photo below.

I must admit that I’m not that enamoured with some of the art on offer here but it’s a lovely place to walk around and when it got too hot we just headed for the surrounding woodland for the shade. I wasn’t too impressed with this ‘bomb’ below, but each to their own.

I didn’t really think much of the Tracey Emin sculpture below either, but Jack quite liked it. He took some of these photos.

You won’t be surprised to know that I was more impressed by the garden which surrounds what was the separate ballroom of the ‘big hoose’ where the owners of the Artland still live.

The ballroom houses some of the Tracey Emin paintings, you can see some here but the link is really better for showing the inside of the ballroom. The artwork is ‘parental advisory’, and Emin seems to have just one thing on her mind at the moment, these paintings are all very recent, done after her radical cancer surgery.

Below is the garden gate. I love the design of the grass intersected by paviors.

And through the gate you can see one of those lit up signs similar to the ones at Modern 1 and 2 in Edinburgh. I find those ones a bit depressing.

And below is the ballroom building which at the moment houses part of their Tracy Emin exhibition, we didn’t stay long, but as ever admired the interior decor.

The ceiling looks like an intricately iced wedding cake, upside-down.

I did quite like the very large metal structure below which is called Firmament. For some reason there are no information boards about the artworks but there was on the map we were given at the entrance. Firmament is by Antony Gormley. There are info boards in areas where art used to be located but has been moved on, telling what used to be there.

Way off in the distance we could see a tower and it turned out to be the rose walk below. It’s made of wood, I don’t know how well it’s going to weather Scottish winters, but it looks very elegant now. It would be a lovely place to get married I think. Oops, I’m in this one which Jack took.

All of the roses are white but you can’t really see them in the photos.

The heleniums below were enjoying the heat and sunshine. This path surrounds the pond.

We had a walk around the nature pond, if you look carefully you should be able to see the swans with their three cygnets.

Jupiter Artland is on the outskirts of Edinburgh and is close to the flightpath for the airport. Below I managed to capture an aeroplane on my phone, as it flew over the Jencks landform.

Then it was time for lunch at the cafe, which was very good. It was the perfect way to celebrate 46 years of annoying each other!