Owned by Nottingham City Council this 21 hectare park is so close to the University of Nottingham that it is often confused for being part of the campus. It is probably decades since the last time I spent any time here, despite trips nearby in recent years, but over the spring we managed a long overdue walk around the lake.
Covering 12 acres that was reclaimed from scrub woodland, the sculpture garden at Burghley House contains a vast array of contemporary sculptures, some of which are considerably stranger than others! Some of my favourites are highlighted below.
2020 has been a write off in a lot of ways, particularly for travelling, so on the weekend I should have been attending my third Open House London I headed out with my Dad to Colwick Country Park for some walking amongst nature which a lot of people have been appreciating more and more this year. I’m lucky to have a nice back garden to sit in and Nottingham has a lot of green spaces that are walkable from where I live, but a place like Colwick Country Park requires a car to get to for me as I’m still avoiding public transport right now.
Continuing the Christmas theme, we recently visited Clumber Park, a country park run by the National Trust and went for a walk around the lake. We’ve been there before (post here) but never done the full walk. It was freezing but a nice bracing walk that took us just over an hour and a half. There is a bit of an Alice in Clumberland Theme going on at the moment which was quite fun – especially in the café where we stopped for a very nice lunch – and we also managed to see and photograph a lot of robins.
On the same day we visited the Monkey Forest we headed next door to Trentham Gardens. Examining a map beforehand we decided to walk around the mile long Trentham Lake, designed by Capability Brown, stopping off to also visit the ruins of Trentham Hall and the Italian Gardens.
On a rare sunny day in April, while I was in London, I decided to take advantage of the weather and head over to see the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Park, which I’d been meaning to do for some time. After the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park closed the large glass and iron structure of Crystal Palace moved to the park. A series of over 30 sculptures were commissioned in 1852 and placed in the grounds of the Park, including dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
After my trip to Martin’s Pond Nature Reserve, I had a look back through my photos and realised that it had been at least 5 years since I’d last visited the nearby Wollaton Hall. I decided therefore to make a day of it, exploring both the grounds and the Hall itself.
I decided it would be a good idea to take advantage of the excellent weather we’d been having at the end of July and head out into the countryside. I picked Rufford Abbey Country Park because as well as a lake and woodland walks there are also the ruins of an Abbey to explore. Plus, I haven’t actually been there since a school trip when I was in primary school.
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