Picnic Areas and Picnic Sites

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On a sunny day, one of the finest picnic spots in London is on the green near the Houses of Parliament. This is a sort of ‘grassy island’ with traffic on all sides - and traffic fumes as well (!) - where you can chomp on your sandwiches and watch sometimes dramatic political events unfold.  Invariably, at times of national or international crisis, you will come across dozens of television crews from all over the world interviewing politicians only feet away from you.  (The politicians themselves have a rather less polluted place to eat their sarnies i.e. on the terrace of Parliament overlooking the River Thames . . .)  The majesty of the area is captured vividly in Philip Bright and Sarah Ramos’ JIMMY RAT, published by Picnic in October 2009. 

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Robin Hood’s Bay
Whitby/Scarborough
Yorkshire Coast

Robin Hood’s Bay is a former fishing village, now chiefly a tourist destination, between Whitby and Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast.  It is also the eastern end of the coast-to-coast walk.  Picnic author Robin Ramsay visited it regularly between 1984 and 2005 and did quite a lot of his writing there inbetween drinking in The Laurel Inn and walking the many paths and trails which lead out of the village.  What is ‘the Bay’, as it is known locally, like? Well, there are four pubs in the village and in all of them dogs and walkers are welcome. ‘Nuff said?
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Glastonbury Festival

‘I hate picnics,’ writes Michael Bollen, author of EARTH INC:

‘When invited to post for a week on the Picnic author blog earlier this year, I asked for my appearance to be delayed until after the Glastonbury festival, at which I played with my ‘band’ Cassetteboy. Brilliant, I thought, Glasto will give me lots to write about. So, here are my Glastonbury observations in full:

1) It’s quite muddy.
2) I’m really drunk.
3) Actually, the mud’s dried out now.

Then I wrote about pies. Not picnics. Just pies. I hate picnics. My name’s Michael Bollen. Picnic published my first novel, a satirical sci-fi romp called EARTH INC and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, that might be over stating it a bit. It wasn’t historic in the same way that, say, the Great Reform Act is . . .
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Canal bridge Newton Harcourt
Leicestershire

The beautiful rural canal network which meanders through Leicestershire first gave author Ben Beazley the initial idea for his novel CROOKED MILE due to be published in early summer 2009 by Picnic Publishing. Set in the late 1880’s, it is a murder mystery based in the town of Kelsford situated mid-way between Leicester, Derby, and Sheffield. (No, don’t reach for your atlas, you won’t find it.) When a unit of the Fenian ‘Irish Republican Brotherhood’, under the leadership of Connor Devlin, choose to steal the payroll of the Shires Canal Company on a rainy December night in 1887, they set in motion a series of events which no one could at the time have foreseen. Investigating the robbery and murders that follow, takes detective Tom Norton of the Kelsford Police and the woman with whom he becomes inextricably linked, the seductive Ruth Samuels, into a dangerous web of intrigue and deceit. Within a short space of time, Norton and Ruth find themselves deeply involved in the workings of a Jewish underground organisation ‘The Pipeline’ bringing refugees such as the psychopathic Eugene Leschenko to Europe from Tsarist Russia, and the illicit gun-running activities of the Fenians. The fast moving thriller takes the reader on a spell binding journey of mystery and suspense from the small Midlands town of Kelsford, across the icy Carpathian Mountains, back to the docklands of mid-summer New York, before returning through the sinister streets of Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel to it’s gripping conclusion. Perfect for any picnic read!
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