You can’t visit Conwy without taking a walk along the quayside and admiring the boats and the seemingly larger than life seagulls. There’s a pub and fish and chips shop, plus a stall selling ice creams and hot drinks etc. There are also boat trips available (I did one of these which will feature in a later post) and the quay leads on to part of the Wales Coast Path (various sections of which will also feature in later posts).
Last week I decided to head out to Gedling Country Park as the weather was bright and sunny and I’d realised that I could get a bus straight to the Spring Lane entrance. There are a few different walks around the site so I decided to do two of the ones I hadn’t done on my last visit, the Top Hard which has some steep inclines through a wooded area and the Low Hazels which is the longest route.
Gedling Country Park is built on the site of Gedling Colliery which started producing coal in 1902 and closed in 1991. It was opened in 2015 as a 580 acre park with lots of open space, a choice of walks of varying difficulty and two viewing platforms that on a bright day allow for views across to Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.
I’m not sure why I hadn’t realised you could actually go inside Wellington Arch until my most recent visit to London. It’s now an English Heritage property, built as an original entrance to Buckingham Palace but then became a victory arch celebrating the Duke of Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon. The sculpture at the top, apparently the largest bronze sculpture in Europe, represents the Angel of Peace descending on the four-horsed Chariot of War.
York has the longest and most well preserved medieval walls in England stretching 2 miles around the city. On my trip to York I only did a partial walk around on two separate days, one from Bootham Bar past York Minster and the other over the west corner, passing the railway station to Micklegate Bar.
Edinburgh’s National Museum of Scotland was the one museum that I definitely wanted to make sure we visited on our trip.
Clifford’s Tower is an English Heritage property in York, all that now remains of York Castle. William the Conqueror was the first to build a castle here, around 1068, on the site where Clifford Tower now stands. Danish invaders burnt it down in 1069 and the present stone tower was constructed in around 1245 by Henry III.
York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe and more than half of Europe’s medieval stained glass is in its windows. The first church on the site dates from around 627 but the present building dates from around 1220.
I’ve taken pictures of the Wheel of Nottingham before, at Nottingham Light Night, but it wasn’t until last Friday, just before the wheel left the city that I actually went on it. The wheel is 60 metres high with 40 enclosed gondolas and takes around 12 minutes to do three revolutions.
The Monument was designed by Christopher Wren to commemorate the Great Fire of London which started in nearby Pudding Lane on 2 September 1666. The Monument is 202 feet high, the exact distance between it and where the fire began.
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