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.
I recently visited Attenborough Nature Reserve for the first time in years as I was in need of a change of scene. Run by the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust it covers 205 hectares of lakes, wetland, grassland and scrub. There are several walks around the reserve – on this occasion we did the Tufted Duck Nature Trail which took us past some of the lakes as well as through areas of grassland.
Last week I paid a visit to Wollaton Hall and Deer Park which I haven’t been to since the pandemic started since it takes me two short bus journeys to get there. I’ve mainly been walking around my local area during all the lockdowns which can get a bit boring so it was nice to have a bit of a change of scene now that I’m fully vaccinated but still taking sensible precautions. I didn’t manage to see any deer on this trip which is unusual but plenty of swans and their cygnets on the lake and I paid a visit to the gardens and saw some sculptures that I’d not seen before around the grounds. [There’s a special exhibition on inside the hall of a T.Rex skeleton for which I have tickets but not till next month so expect a post about that in the future].
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 one of last year’s sunnier days I decided to take a walk along the Nottingham and Beeston Canal. It opened in 1796 as a means of transporting coal and is still an active part of the city, albeit more for leisure than commerce these days.
The deer at Wollaton Hall are currently rutting so I thought that would be a good opportunity to take some photographs (being mindful not to get too close, of course!) Below are some of the photos I captured of the stags, plus geese and swans around the lake.
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.
The Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve in Cambridgeshire is one of Britain’s oldest nature reserves and one of the last remaining areas of undrained fenland. It has been cared for by the National Trust since 1899.
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