THEME Park Lightwater Valley is living up to its name with a special illuminated winter trail featuring hundreds of magic lanterns and huge statues of some of literatures most famous characters.
The theme park, near Ripon, has adopted one of the cities most famous sons to stage an Alice in Winterland light trail. It is hosting the event up to the end of December featuring many major characters from his book Alice in Wonderland written in 1865.
The characters include a four metre high Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee and the Jaberwocky. One of Lewis Carroll's most memorable creations The Queen of Hearts is also at the park along with a chessboard containing life size movable pieces.
The author's father was Canon at Ripon Cathedral and carved figures resembling the Gryphon and the White Rabbit have been discovered in the Cathedral choir stalls where the author would have seen them and potentially used them as inspiration for his many anthropormorphic creations. His father was also Rector at St Peter's Church at Croft on Tees, where the writer is said to have been inspired by carvings to create the Cheshire Cat and other characters.
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