All the vintage vibes you could ask for.
When we came up with the Sherlock theme we were a bit stumped as to where we would shoot them. One thing we knew is that we didn’t want to go to London and film the usual locations, mainly because getting to London early enough to get the shots we needed with no one in would mean an overnight stay and we didn’t want to do that, so we have to get creative.
We knew that we wanted that old London feel for these pictures; we wanted to create an atmosphere of times gone by. We knew that we could get some of the shots in our town centre as there are some lovely stone buildings there, and we had a few locations for the other shots but for the majority, we were struggling.
Then my mum had an idea; she remembered taking us to The Tramway Museum years ago that had an old village street that would be perfect. We did some research and decided that it would be perfect. The museum was about to close for the season, so we rearranged our schedule and manage to squeeze a day in.
It’s a 90-minute drive from us and we aimed to get there as close to opening time as we could. We arrived at 10.30 in a literal sea of fog; we could hardly see anything. I have to admit that we panicked a little because this was an all-or-nothing kind of shoot and we had to get some pictures. We paid our entrance fee, walked through the entrance and were met with a street that looked as if it has been staged for a Sherlock movie, the fog making it extra special. We walked around and settled on four locations; the top of the street, the middle of the street, the police phone box and the pub. Since it was still foggy and early we managed to get all of these pictures pretty easily, waiting each time to make sure we got a tram in shot. It was one of the easiest photo shoots ever, even though it involved several changes of clothes.
It was only after taking the pictures that we really began to see the charm of the place; red telephone boxes, cobbled streets, building from olden days and vintage trams travelling up and down. It was like living in a film set. It’s not a large street but if you work the angles you can get some amazing shots.
We had same lunch at the tea room and then decided to travel on the trams. You can have as many rides as you want and you get a gold coin to give to the tram drivers; it’s all very cute. We managed to get some great shots inside and managed to get a shot on the back of one when it briefly stopped – we asked permission from the staff for this and I must say that they were super-helpful.
We had two tram rides before we felt we had our fill. We also walked around and had a look at all the old trams before tea and cake and our drive home.
The place did start to fill up as we were leaving as it was the illuminated Starlight evening that night where they illuminate the trams and the village, which unfortunately we couldn’t stay for.
There was much more to see like woodland walks, a sculpture trail, lead mining display, and the glory mine but I can’t tell you anything about these as we didn’t do any of it. Also, there were more tram related things to see but again, we didn’t do that.
When we left the place was full of families who seemed to be having the time of their lives, riding up and down the trams and I can imagine it would make a great day out for families.
For us it made the perfect location for the oldie worldie pictures that we wanted and I would most certainly recommend it.
