I stumbled across an advert for this Christmas Tree Festival the other week and decided to pay it a visit. I’ve been to St Mary’s a number of times and its a lovely church and always very welcoming. This festival event was in aid of Emmanuel House a local homeless support charity. I’m not sure the event is all that well known – I was the only non staff member there during my visit. There are donation card readers at the entrance so you can donate however much you like via contactless.
Although I’ve been to Chatsworth House once before – a scary amount of years ago – I’ve never been to their Christmas event and my friend suggested that we should do so for our annual Christmas trip. This year’s theme was The Enchanted Garden, focusing on the beauty and magic of the country in winter which included some interesting projections of fairies throughout the house, as well as beautifully decorated rooms and lots of Christmas trees.
Decorations for the Christmas tree are an easy souvenir from my travels, usually small so easily packed away in hand luggage. I didn’t take nearly as many trips as I wanted to this year due to various health shenanigans but I did manage to buy more than a few new decorations for the tree and they’re featured here in what has become something of a traditional yearly post. The first was from Cambridge and is of King’s College Chapel which you’ll be able to read about in a couple of weeks.
Originally built from wood by William the Conqueror in 1068 Warwick Castle was rebuilt in stone during the 12th century. It’s been home to many important historical figures, possibly the most well known being Richard Neville who was nicknamed the Kingmaker due to his actions during the Wars of the Roses. But, learning about the history of the castle wasn’t really my purpose for visiting last weekend. (It vaguely had been but it soon became clear that Christmas at the Castle was very much its own thing and I wasn’t going to learn much about the history while there – I bought a guidebook for that!). This visit was part of an annual tradition with a friend to visit a Christmas light show or market every year. We’ve done this for a very long time, only having to cancel plans during COVID lockdowns. You can read about some of our past adventures here and here.
It’s no secret that I love Christmas. I don’t go too overboard but I do like to decorate the tree and the living room with ornaments I’ve bought on my travels. I often do a round up on Instagram of the newest ones but I thought this year I’d do a post here now that I’ve started travelling a little again. They’re usually a cheap(ish) souvenir and small enough not to take up a lot of room in your bag. The first one is this wonderful (and actually quite expensive) Welsh dragon I bought recently at Conwy Castle in Wales. [Starting next year will be a whole series of posts about what I got up to in a week’s exploration of North Wales – spoiler, it was a lot!]. Although I live in England I’ve been learning Welsh via Duolingo since the first UK Covid lockdown as I thought it would be nice to learn one of the Home Nation’s languages, Wales being the country I’ve visited the most. Amusingly one of the first words you learn is draig, the Welsh for dragon.
The Exchange building in Nottingham was the city’s first shopping centre, opened in 1929. Found next to the Council House the Christmas decorations and tree have been of the same pretty design for around five years now but it’s worth a quick walk through if you’re visiting the nearby Winter Wonderland.
Last week I took a walk around the Christmas Market in Nottingham’s Market Square in order to take some photos. There’s no ice rink this year for obvious reasons and it’s also supposed to be more spread out than usual (after last year’s debacle), though it honestly didn’t feel any more spread out than usual to me. There are some familiar sights however such as the tree, the wheel, the helter skelter and the flashing snowflakes on the front of the Council House and the lights certainly do brighten up the gloomy evenings.
As doing any kind of Christmas travelling this year has not been possible I decided to do a round up of some previous trips, using mostly photos I haven’t posted here before. First up is the trip I took with a friend to the Christmas Light Show at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire in 2018.
As has become a yearly exercise I went out last week to take some photos of the Christmas lights around Nottingham. I was particularly impressed this year by the lights and tree in the Exchange shopping area as in the first picture below.
Please note photos have been removed due to lack of hosting space.
Recently I went on a walk around Nottingham to take photos of the Christmas decorations around the city including at the Winter Wonderland and the Exchange.
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