In my quest to find London's literary side, I seem to initially have stumbled upon everything Roald Dahl-themed. After Quentin Blake's House of Illustration last week, which currently has an exhibit on The BFG, this week I followed The BGF Dream Jar Trail through London. Organised by Visit London to coincide with the film's release, the jars scattered throughout the city house the dreams of a host of famous faces, such as Steven Spielberg, Stephen Hawking, Helen Mirren, Sophie Dahl, Zoella, Sadiq Khan and Tim Minchin.
Do you remember the elephant statues dotted around London a few years ago? Or, more recently, the Paddington Bear and Shaun the Sheep ones? The BFG Dream Jar Trail follows a similar concept where well-known people get to design their own statue in line with a theme, which are then placed along set routes through the city, cleverly guiding Londoners and visitors alike from one landmark to another.
They're smaller than the elephants, sheep and bear we've seen in London before and harder to spot, which makes finding one an extra special treat. There is a map of the entire trail you can print off with address locations of the various dream jars, but I found the individual maps for smaller sections of the route much more easy to use, so either pull those up on your smartphone or take a photo with your camera of the route you want to follow before heading off.
The routes are: Her Majesty's Trail (South Kensington to Green Park and Buckingham Palace), Phizzwizzing West End Trail (Marble Arch to Covent Garden), Splendiferous City Trail (St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tower of London), Gloriumptious River Trail (Tower Bridge to Shakespeare's Globe), and the Wild Explorers Trail (St. James Park, Green Park and Hyde Park).
The trail names are very befitting a Roald Dahl work but the individual dream jars are much more personal to their creator and so span a wide variety of designs, shapes, sizes and even textures. They're not even all contained within a glass jar, but the majority were which didn't make taking photos of them ideal. However, we still had tons of fun trailing across London in search of our BFG fix and you can find a selection of the dream jars we found on our day out below.
Located in front of the House of Illustration near King's Cross is Quentin Blake's I Dreamt I Could Fly
Penny For Your Thoughts (made of actual pennies! Can you guess how many were used?) by Jane Morgan in the City
Tim Minchin's Theatre of Dreams comprising books, music and theatre masks, all of which you can find in his version of Roald Dahl's Matilda just down the road from this dream jar in Seven Dials (one of my favourites) ♥
My other favourite, which was easily the cutest design we came across: For the Love of the Hedgehog by YouTuber Zoella
Simon Cowell's For the Love of Animals with the beautiful Tower of London in the background
Dream Big by Romero Britton in the West End (right in front of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
And, finally, Ship of Dreams by Sir Ben Ainslie with the gorgeous Tower Bridge behind it
The BFG Dream Jar Trail will be in London until 31 Augustus, after which the jars will be auctioned off for charity. I definitely recommend making the most of the summer weather and heading into London for some exploring of the famous city sights while searching for the dream jars, and do let me know in the comments which ones you've found! If you haven't spotted all 50 by the time the 31st rolls around, you can see photos of all of them here, but no peeking before then.
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