Nottingham has a great deal of green spaces many of which I’ve never actually visited, so this year I’ve decided to try and visit more of them. Arnot Hill Park was the first of these, which I picked solely because I happened to be roughly in the area on the day. It was easy to get to by bus – there’s a stop right outside the entrance on Nottingham Road.
Bodlondeb (which means contentment) is 19 acres of woodland just to the west of Conwy Quayside; there are many footpaths through and around the woods and the one I took came off the Wales Coast Path. It was getting on in the afternoon and I hadn’t planned to visit the woods but as is often the case I saw a trail and decided to follow it!
On this trip I entered the reserve via the Beeston Canal towpath which I haven’t done before. It was foggy to start off with though not actually all that cold, even though large parts of the lakes and ponds were frozen. You can’t get lost on this route (or really any of the different routes around the nature reserve) so we just followed it until we decided we needed a cup of tea (first time I’ve used a flask in ages!) and then headed back the way we’d come to where we’d parked the car.
The Wales Coast Path follows, or at least runs close to, the coastline of Wales, making Wales potentially the first country in the world where its possible to walk the entire length of its coast – all 870 miles of it. It was launched in 2012 and I have done parts of it before along Anglesey, though always as in this case as a by product of being near the coast rather than a deliberate plan. As such I found myself walking along a small section in Conwy (I would go on to walk a rather larger section later in the week in Llandudno).
On my most recent visit to Woodthorpe Grange Park I went to have a look around the Plant Shop and saw that the Tropical House was open. I haven’t been inside for probably at least a decade because it has had some very odd opening hours, but now I see they are keeping it open at the same time as the shop, so Monday-Sunday 10-4. There’s been a nursery (in the flower sense!) at Woodthorpe since the 1920s and the flower displays that adorn the city during the spring and summer and for the Britain in Bloom and other competitions in Nottingham are grown here; the shop sells off excess stock as well as locally produced gifts.
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.
A few weeks ago I decided to head out to Gedling Country Park which I haven’t been to for a while. The weather was sunny though quite windy and since I had walked there and back I just spent a little time walking around some of the smaller routes and enjoying the views.
The jay has become a regular visitor to our garden over the last month – even appearing on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. He seems particularly fond of the peanuts I regularly leave out for the squirrel.
Last week I chanced to look out into our garden and saw this wonderful jay. I was taken a bit by surprise as we’ve never had one in the garden before but it was lovely to see it hopping around the trees and even taking a big chunk out of the fat balls!
Just over a week ago I took a walk around Woodthorpe Grange Park as I wanted to photograph the changing of the leaves. A surprising number were still green but there were also some beautuifl reds and golds on display.
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