EP #8: Nottingham - A high-spirited city of enriched history

Nottingham is a vibrant city in the England's East Midlands region. The city is enriched with colourful history and famous for its invention and innovation.

Hello friends!

I hope you are doing well. Another week has passed by and here I am for another issue of Wanderington - a platform where I write down my memories travelling across the UK, experiencing different cultures and aspects of life in the UK.

As mentioned last week, Nottingham is the centre of attention today and I’m so excited to present the wonderful time I’ve had in this beautiful city. I will try to include as many details of the trip as possible this time for any friend out there who wants to plan a similar day trip to us.

Getting ready

The date was December 2nd, 2023. Me and my brother decided to go on Saturday, simply because a strike would happen on Sunday that would affect our operator.

[8:30 am]: it was a freezing day all over England and we were glad we didn’t book the train any sooner. We left the house at around 8:30 to take the bus to Birmingham New Street Station to get on board the direct train to Nottingham. It was an off-peak train in the morning, and the service was running smoothly.

[10:30 am]: we got off at the Nottingham Railway Station to start our trip. The station itself is quite nice, and I took a quick picture in the foggy weather before heading to the first point of interest.

Nottingham Railway Station is a railway station as well as a tram stop. It was built by the Midland Railway (MR) in 1848 and rebuilt in 1904.

Nottingham Railway Station on a December morning.

The day trip begins

[10:45 am]: we took a short walk via Carrington Street (the street you saw in the previous picture) and headed straight to see the British Waterways building. To be honest, we totally underestimated the 0-degree Celsius from the weather forecast, and I was shaking heavily when taking this picture.

This is the place where I’ve seen a lot of check-ins from my friends or international students. I’ve got to admit, the mist didn’t help at all.

[11:15 am]: we took another short walk towards Nottingham Castle via Castle Road. There was quite a long queue to get inside the Castle but as decided the day before, due to the time restraint, we didn’t go inside but only took a peek from the outside.

Nottingham Castle’s construction started in the 1670s. Since then, it has been burnt in 1831, left as a ruin for about 40 years, renovated in 1870s, endured a huge restoration in 2018, reopened in 2022, closed 5 months afterwards, and finally reopened in June 2023.

Of course, Nottingham is known for its role in the Robin Hood legend, so, to honour the local legend, here you go:

[11:40 am]: From the Castle, we headed towards the city centre to see the St. Peter's Church of Nottingham, following my usual tradition of “visiting at least 1 church /cathedral”. Just in front of the building, there was some kind of charity show going on: a dozen musicians in their uniform, holding the drums, trumpets and saxophones in their hands and started playing song after song. We stopped for 20 minutes to enjoy the show. I was so drawn to it that I forgot to take any pictures or record any videos (whoops)

[12:15 pm]: This was one of the highlights of our trip when we arrived at the Old Market Square! There was a bustling Christmas market happening at the square and it really was quite a scene! The stalls were set beautifully one next to the others, the music was on, the lights were on, and shops were packed with people. I got myself a nice little cup of mulled wine (in the picture) to warm myself up while browsing the booths.

Honestly, I had no idea there was gonna be a Christmas market, so it really was a pleasant surprise from Nottingham. I also got a cute gift for my parents back in Vietnam, but since they might be reading this article right now, I’m not gonna reveal it :D (hi Mom!)

From here, we went to see the Boots Library of Nottingham Trent University, as well as some other notable sights of the city on the way. Take a look!

[1:30 pm]: After a light lunch, we continued our trip to “arguably the 2nd best destination” of the day. A short bus took us away from the city centre, followed by a 5-minute walk to reach Green’s Windmill & Science Centre.

Built for the milling of wheat and flour, the Windmill remained in use until the 1860s, renovated in the 1980s and is now part of a science centre, which together have become a local tourist attraction.

The Windmill was built shortly after 1807 by baker George Green. It has been through a long history of being forced closed, abandoned, destroyed by fire, renovated and even faced the threat of demolition. It was finally acquired by Nottingham City Council in 1979 and became a local point of interest for the enthusiasts.

We took our time to explore all five storeys of the Mill, read about its history, how it operated and what products to expect. The Science Centre is a small space to learn more about the Mill as well as some physics/maths theorems.

The Tower Mill model showed 3 but there were actually 5 floors inside the Tower.

Green's Windmill even made an appearance in an episode of “The Eyes of Texas” in 1989.

[2:30 pm]: After spending an hour at the Mill, we took 2 buses across the city centre to the Eastern part of the city for the most memorable experience of our trip to Nottingham: visiting Wollaton Park, including the Hall, the Natural History Museum and the wonderful deer park.

In fact, it’s such a cool experience that it would probably need an issue on its own. That said, I’ll just drop a short clip of the path towards the Main Hall here and save all the details for my next issue, which will be available this Sunday!

Heading back

[4:30 pm]: It got dark at around 4:30 pm, which was also the closing time of the deer park, so we bid farewell to the amazing place and headed back to the city centre and returned to the Railway station. It was such a memorable trip that I’ve been on, definitely one of the most fun ones ever since my tour across the UK in September.

End Notes

Thank you for reading this week’s issue of Wanderington. I’ll return in a couple of days to finish the bits on Wollaton Park and inform you all about the topic of the Christmas weekends.

That should be it for now folks. Cheers and take care!