Nottingham

I actually went to Nottingham overnight before I left for Ireland - quite a long time ago now! But I didn't bother to include it in anything as it was only a night. However, after Wales (once my sister got back from Iceland) I went back to Nottingham so I thought I'd do a post now.

I was a mixture of touristy and lazy in Nottingham as it's kind of nice to do nothing after so long on the road. I was also quite productive and got lots of paperwork-y tasks done.

So here's Nottingham in a nutshell.

First Trip:

Europe! (OK, not continental, but totally still counts)

Yes, this is just a shot out of a train window. It's between London and Heathrow and it's not exciting, but I don't catch trains often so it was exciting for me!

I am a Harry Potter nerd for anyone who didn't know. But at 8.30am I couldn't be bothered waiting the half hour for them to bring out the trolley and the scarf, so it's only half the classic tourist shot.

King's Cross, St. Pancras or something nearby. Pretty brick anyway.

Statue in St. Pancras

More train windows! This time on the way to Nottingham and actually pretty. I'd heard England was largely grey so it was nice to see it sunny and green like the 50s image I had in my head.

An actual meadow of flowers!

 My sister's boyfriend has recently taken up skydiving so we watched him and others do that for a few hours. It was super hot but I saw my first portable, one-use barbeque which was exciting, oh, and the skydiving of course!

That's him!

 That evening we walked by the canals and got tea at a pub. I was off at 3am to go to Dublin to meet Eleanor - those stories you already know!

Second Trip:

I spent the first two days doing as little as possible. I went to the supermarket both days and that was my trip out of the house. I did join my sister at a climbing gym one evening (her name's Lucy by the way). Otherwise I just booked my flight to Italy and a few other things. Booking flights is way less exciting when it's your 5th flight in your 8th month of travel. This is part of the productiveness I mentioned earlier. I won't bother with any more of it!

Once I'd had my fill of lazy productivity I got my tourist on a little.

It was raining on the day I went to Wollaton House but it suited it. The huge deer park was nearly deserted and the sound muffled any traffic noise.  Walking around the grounds with the grand house behind me I half expected some Darcy-esque figure to come strolling around the corner and offer me an umbrella!

Scenes from Batman (I think the Dark Knight) were filmed here - anyone recognise this dining room? Anne Hathaway jumped out the window from memory.

Notice all the shields?

This is the old entrance to the park I think.

 That afternoon Lucy and I went into the city. Nottingham is the home of Robin Hood so we saw many statues and informative plaques around. I particularly liked this one in front of the castle. 

Those caves used to be used for storage or something similar I think, though I may be getting muddled - very old anyway!

 We popped into Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem - a pub built in 1189! It's built into the cliff so it's slightly cavelike and very cool, though perhaps don't visit if you're claustrophobic! Apparently the name comes from the Crusades stopping there on their way to Jerusalem.

This is the ceiling extending up into the rock

 The next day I paid a visit to Nottingham Castle - it's not the same one as features in Robin Hood's tales - much too new. I wasn't blown away by it as the inside has been turned into a museum that has little to do with the castle, and I always prefer visiting old buildings to imagine the people there - hard to do when you're seeing ancient Egyptian artifacts rather than British ones! The outside and grounds weren't bad though, I was a fan of this lion though - he just looks absolutely aghast, like you've just opened the door on him taking a shower!

 Here are two pictures from wanderings in Nottingham city - the first is of the main square which was pretty and had some semi-permanent summer fair going on and the second is the most British street I think I've seen, though I wish the phone box was blue!

I don't always plan things which is how I ended up in Wales!

As an intro to this post I apologise to my mother for hitchhiking alone and would like to point out that I was kind enough to not tell her until afterwards!

So, in the last post where I actually told you where I was, I was in Paris and Eleanor had just left and I got on a bus to Calais.

Then I got off the bus in Calais and kind of just stood there. It was 3am, drizzling and I didn't have a ticket for the ferry or any plan beyond the knowledge that you pay per car on the ferry not per passenger so I might be able to get a ride.

I pretty quickly found a Polish guy trying to do the same thing who'd been there about two hours longer than I had. We banded up and hit up the truck stops. We had no luck. Most people either haven't arrived or are sleeping at 3am.

However, as you may know, Polish people speak Polish and, as you may not know, an unexpectedly large number of Poles transport things to the UK via ferry. We hung around outside the check in area and very quickly found a Polish guy who spoke no English but was willing to give us a ride. We jumped in and caught the 6am ferry, and since he was a trucker we got trucker tickets and got to have the special trucker breakfast. I was excited.

At this point it may be worth mentioning that I'd suddenly realised the evening before that my plans had changed in a minor way (thanks to E having to be back to write an essay) and I was heading back to the UK 3 days earlier than planned. What I'd failed to take into account was that my sister, who lives in Nottingham and whom I was planning to stay with, was in Iceland for those three days.

Well. Enter desperate facebook messages. Luckily I have a friend named Joe who up and left to Wales to work on a falconry (there may be a technical name that I don't know). This was incredibly fortunate for me, even more so as I hadn't seen him in forever and he checks facebook maybe once a month and I happened to get the right day.

So I got on the road from Dover and hitched the 476km to Joe's house in Wales. I did most of it in one ride with a lovely French woman off to visit her sister.

Joe lives on a working falconry so upon arriving, two slightly bemused workers told me to sit tight then gave me a ride to where he was.

In an effort to keep this short I'll give you a quick idea of what I got up to in Wales and then just leave some pictures: we wandered around to a pond near Joe's house, Catherine was with us and pointed out bats and competed with Joe to spot native birds. We went to the beach and Joe interrogated some kite buggiers (technical term that) for a while, we also popped our heads into some blinds? Hides? The things you hide in while hunting ducks or bird watching. We went to the pub and had a flat dinner. Joe left to do work stuff up north and I stayed with his flatmates another night. They took me to a workmates house to meet his NZ falcon named Maori. The next morning they dropped me off at a good spot to hitch up to Nottingham to actually stay with my sister.

Crazy narrow country roads with hedgerows on either side.

This is not an interesting photo. It's mainly so you can see how weird Welsh is!

Meet Maori

Maori meet dog.

Tom - one of Joe's very tolerant flatmates (largely OK with the fact that I just turned up and stayed for three days)

Maori is a fan of being on top of people. As you'll see. This is Maori + Catherine

There's actually a better photo of Maori on my head than this but I look so utterly creepy that I refuse to put it up!

Back on the road. Sorry Mum!