Category: Reviews

LeLooUlf is back with another setting for the end-of-year holiday season, Leloo’s Jingle Bells Trails. This delightful sky platform setting is probably best described using LeLoo’s own words:

An enchanting outdoor Holiday Season festival that promises a magical experience for all! Bring your skates and get ready to glide around the frozen pond using the skating system for singles and couples. You can also skate along the beautiful icy paths with the soft glow of twinkling lights. Then take a well-deserved break and visit the outdoor café for some hot cocoa or a cup of mulled wine … Everyone is Welcome to this PG event!

–  Jingle Bells Trails

This is a place that is unabashed in its celebration of the modern spirit of Christmas; there’s a Christmas market, ice skating, snow, reindeer, snowmen, decorated trees, baubles, a mistletoe kissing booth, hot chocolate – the list goes on.

Two paths lead away from the landing point. One is signposted the Skating Path, and the reason becomes clear as to why after travelling along it for a short distance visitors will find it turns to ice and a skate giver and sign where it does – allowing them to continue along the path on foot or by skating along it, passing under a pair of trestle tunnels with glittering lights as the path meanders onwards to reach a junction.

Here the main path turns to the right, whilst a short stretch continued onwards into the Playful Pond, where a little skating can be had (if the pond is not too crowded for you!). Passing onwards, however, the main path allows visitors to reach a little chapel which, in keeping with the Christmas theme, has a little nativity scene and a decorated tree within.

From here the way loops back towards the landing point once more, a small junction and a footpath enticing visitors to drop in on the setting’s one house, a cosy little place with a fire in the hearth and goodies to be enjoyed in the kitchen. Meanwhile, running westwards, the skating path once again slips under a couple of light-festooned trestle tunnels, one with another path leading away from it to offer a further little diversion – this to visit the setting’s horses.

Prior to getting back to the landing point, this arm of the path provides access to the main skating pond (around which it largely loops) where among other things, you can join a slightly odd-looking but fun-filled snowman in a dance (or several!) if the skating doesn’t appeal; and he certainly knows his dances (up to and including David Brent’s spectacularly weird dance from The Office – that’s the original UK version, not the US remake). That said, the skating options displayed under the tree occupying the middle of the pond offer an extensive range of opportunities for having a little icy fun.

Just beyond the entrance to the pond, the icy surface of the path gives way to snow, and that to cobbles and the setting’s café, where hot drinks and suchlike are on offer. From here, it is a short walk back to LeLoo’s little market and the landing point. But there is also much more the see and enjoy as you wander: there are little comic vignettes to cause a smile, polar bears who seem to be making the most of the wintery setting, LeLoo’s art to be enjoyed and lots of little photo opportunities. All of which makes for an engaging visit in preparation for the upcoming holidays.

SLurl Details

• Jingle Bells Trails (Friends, rated Moderate)

It was back to Yoyo Collas’ Homestead region of Borkum for me recently, on the grounds that I dropped in early on in 2023, so hopping over once more as the year draws to a close has something of a nice balance to it. Plus, I’d been informed that the region had received a winter make-over.

Drawing its name from the Lower Saxony island which forms the largest and westernmost of the East Frisian Islands as it sits alongside the border with the Netherlands, and caught between the North Sea and the Wadden Sea, Yoyo’s Borkum has always been a place that is both photogenic and a reminder of how good it is to spend time away from the bustle of life and simply be. This remains true with this winter 2023 iteration, which incorporates a couple of little  reminders from past builds to help generate a feeling of continuity through the changing seasons, whilst at the same time it presents an entirely new location to explore.

The first of these little reminders is the Apple Fall Old Manufactory. Still overlooking the beaches – if from a different location compared to my visit in March, it retains its feel as a place of work now converted into a place to life, with an inviting , warm interior, together with some furnishings on the deck which also serve as reminders of past builds. Behind it sits the familiar barn, this time occupied by the animals and fowl who might find the wintry weather and colder winds (the clothing pegged out on the line strung between house and barn give ample evidence that the wind is blustering its way over the landscape).

Down below the house, the broad beach is covered in snow – as is the rest of the landscape – and so hardly a place for soaking up the Sun or splashing out into the waters lapping the shore; well not if you are sane, at least. However, this hasn’t stopped the local beach chairs resolutely turning their backs on the wind and offering places for visitors to sit, the braziers burning brightly alongside each one perhaps adding their warmth to the invitation to sit for a while.

Inland, across a dip in the land from the converted warehouse sits another cabin, this one offering a view over the south-eastern side portion of the region, as it sits on a rocky bluff. Like the cabin to the north, it has a welcoming and cosy interior and a deck with further seating outside for those who enjoy the brisk air. However, someone has clearly gone to a lot of trouble to get it to its hilltop post, this particular cabin having once been an iron-hulled houseboat!

Off to the north-east lies another reminder of past builds, this one taking the form of a lighthouse standing on a blunt headland – although if memory serves, this one is of a different design to the one gracing the island back in March 2023. It shares the same coastal upland as the converted factory and its barn, a rocky line separating the north and east sides of the island from the beaches below as it crooks a finger southward from the lighthouse to end as a blank-face promontory overlooking a frozen inlet which is now being used for ice-skating, and where the locals have set-up little kiosks and trailers from which warming refreshments might be had.

Where much of the island’s interior was open was given over to rippling seas of lavender and other plants at my last visit, now they have become suitably wooded, frost-bearded firs covering the gently hills, paths and trails cutting through them as they are watched over by a tall wind turbine, its blades tuning in the wind to provide the power for the cabins and skate-side hostelries. Deer roam these woods as might the odd sledding enthusiast or two (look for the sign board!) – although some might find the presence of a trio of dire wolves among the trees a little worrying! Also foraging through the trees and the grass poking up through the snow slopes around them are white horses, their colouring a perfect camouflage in the circumstances.

Throughout all of this are boardwalks, paths and trails to roam, places to sit awaiting discovery (some with a lean towards the holiday period in their style) and a rich mixture of animals (some obviously mentioned above) and birds throughout, all of which add life and depth to the setting as well as upping the ante for photographers.

Finished with an ideal environment setting and subtle soundscape, winter’s Borkum in Second Life retains its status as a relaxing and photogenic location in which to spend time.

SLurl Details

• Borkum (Golden Place, rated Moderate)