Day Trip in the East Midlands

Not Quite the Hogwarts Express

A recent need to attend a convention near Nottingham gave me the chance to try a route I'd never used before, the "Robin Hood Line" in Nottingham. The line goes all the way to Worksop where it reaches the route between Sheffield and Lincoln, but I only needed to travel one stop to Bulwell, where the station was just around the corner from the church where my meeting was being held.

The overall journey from my home in Stamford was not a particularly quick one, involving a change at Leicester where the online journey planner specified a 59-minute wait - a potential connection an hour earlier was clearly missed here by the timetable - as well as a more reasonable change at Nottingham. When I arrived, though, and heard everyone else complaining about an enormous queue on the M1 motorway and trying devise routes home to avoid it I was glad that I had come by train! Again, as I have said before, the time taken travelling by train is not really that important, because it is time that can be used, whereas driving requires concentration on the driving itself.

In the event my train from Stamford arrived at Leicester a couple of minutes early and I was able to take an earlier train to Nottingham than planned, a whole hour earlier! This was fine: I was planning a coffee-and-croissant break and would now have it at Nottingham rather than Leicester ... Eventually the time came to take the train to Bulwell, and I found it a very comfortable and convenient train for a local journey. Had I been needing to travel further, I'd happily have used this train right to the end of the line.

When I left the train at Bulwell I realised that as well as a Train Manager on board there were two security guards in each coach. I wondered why, never having seen that anywhere else. I still wonder why! 

Bulwell station is an interchange with the city's tram system and with a number of bus routes, too, and I was surprised to see that there was quite a thriving town centre right by the station.

After my day conference at the nearby church I returned to the station for my ride home and this time there were also two police officers on board! I asked why this line needed their presence and they said that it was simply a routine patrol; they go out every day on a number of train services simply to deter and reassure. They seemed unaware of the security guards. Very odd.

And so to another change at Nottingham and at Leicester and back home, not an especially quick way to undertake this particular journey, but quick enough and I had been able to use the time to catch up and various little jobs.

The allusion to Harry Potter in my heading arises from the reason for my travel: the day included a lecture and some exercises on the psychology of illusion and our speaker was a member of the Magic Circle whose lecture was entitled "Defence Against the Dark Arts"!

Some Practical Little Journeys

Train trips to events official and personal

Sometimes I travel for fun, sometimes because I have to be in other places to do things of varying importance. Either way I always try to travel by train or bus whenever I can (or walk or cycle for short journeys), for all sorts of reasons I have been through elsewhere in this blog. 

Recently I have taken a trip to Lincoln for an event at the Cathedral where our Acting Bishop wanted to thank those of us who continue to provide ministry in our retirement. The value of retirement ministry was illustrated when I arranged a meeting in Lincoln on the same day, planning to go straight from the meeting to the cathedral service, which was followed by a sandwich lunch (I walked in to the service just as the Bishop was starting it!). Fitting in the meeting before an 11:00 event meant that I had to leave Stamford much earlier than usual. It was tempting to drive, but I had so much I wanted to get done and driving the car seems such a waste of time even though theoretically it would get me to Lincoln nearer to the time of my meeting and in less time, and would enable me to leave whenever I wished. The ability to get things done won out, though, and I booked train tickets to leave Stamford on the 06:57 after a hurried breakfast.

This gave me a simple connection into the 07:31 East Midlands Railway service to Lincoln via Spalding and Sleaford. I said Morning Prayer on the train to Peterborough and then worked the rest of the way, partly on preparation for my meeting and then making my way through a rather full email inbox - retirement has not stood in the way of busyness! I arrived in Lincoln in plenty of time before my meeting and had a cup of coffee at the Grand Café at the bus station before taking a bus up the hill to my meeting.

I had a good time catching up with old friends and making new ones over the lunch after the cathedral worship and then it was time to walk back down to the station. I had booked Anytime tickets and had seats reserved on a 15:27 departure, but was ready to leave well before then. There was a LNER Azuma standing at the station bound for London with a stop at Peterborough, so I boarded that and was taken smoothly and swiftly back to Peterborough, this time via Newark and Grantham. The reason this train was not shown as an option for travel to Stamford is that it would have connected with the one westbound train per day which Cross Country is presently not running between Peterborough and Stamford: a "Covid Keep" I'd rather lose! There is now a much better service than ever between Peterborough and Lincoln, but it is of limited value to Stamford people because of the gaps in the timetable, one each way, on our local line. Anyway, it worked for me because I knew there was a bus that I could use to fill the gap, and being old enough for free bus travel it did not cost me anything - but it did not leave until just before the train, if running, would have arrived in Stamford, and it was very much slower than the train. Still, it worked and I was still home in reasonable time and had had a good day's work and play.

The other recent short trip was to Nottingham with my wife to attend the funeral of an old acquaintance. Again it was tempting to take the car but in the end we decided to travel by rail which would allow flexibility to have drinks with friends afterwards if appropriate and to travel together for part of the way back with those from farther away whom we knew to be travelling by rail. Getting there turned out to be much quicker than anticipated: our train to Leicester was on time, but the services from there to Nottingham were running just a touch late, two or three minutes, which made it just possible, if we hurried, to get a connection half and hour earlier than planned, and it was also a quicker train, non-stop to Nottingham. We had planned plenty of time in Nottingham for coffee and a tram to the church for the funeral, but after the coffee we actually had time to walk to the church, and even to take a detour through the arboretum which was rather pleasant, and still be in plenty of time. We met one friend there, and another couple arrived a little later on a train from London.

Afterwards, when memories had been exchanged over food and drink we made our way back. This time we joined our three friends on the tram which took us straight to Nottingham rail station. One was taking a Cardiff train from there, and the rest of us boarded the next train for London which was calling at Leicester. There we left our London friends and awaited the train home. There was almost an hour to wait, so we left the station and enjoyed a cocktail (buy one, get one free!) at The Merchant of Venice, the Shakespeare-themed Italian café-restaurant almost opposite the station, which is rapidly becoming our usual stopping place in Leicester. Trains between Leicester and Stamford are not especially quick, the route being a "pasting together" of what remains of several former branch lines, but it is a useful line and they are fast enough for our purposes. Again, they suffer from the gaps in service that I mentioned above, but for us these do not matter on this part of the route because we never travel out in the afternoon or home in the morning: it is when we are going out towards Peterborough or Cambridge and returning in the afternoon that the gaps are an inconvenience. Perhaps when the strikes are over and people have the confidence to travel again (and Cross Country employs enough drivers!) the full timetable will operate once more and we'll be able to travel when and where we like.

My, How You've Changed!

Local craft ale. My drink at dinner in
Nottingham city centre

We had an invitation to a celebration of an old university friend's 40th anniversary of his licensing as a Reader (a lay preacher and assistant minister) in the Church of England recently. It was in Nottingham where he and my wife were good friends at that time, and neither of us had been back there since her graduation other than to the university itself, but that is not in the city centre.

The celebration, a church service followed by a buffet lunch, was on a Saturday, starting at 11:00 and we decided to make a two-day "adventure" of it by travelling there on the Friday and staying overnight, exploring a bit and possibly doing something on the Friday evening if we found the right sort of thing.

For just one night we did not need much luggage and I did not bother with a wheeled suitcase, simply putting everything into my small overnight bag (that's probably why it's called that!) including my MacBook so that I could catch up with some photographic filing on the way. Nottingham is not far from our home in Stamford and there was not much to be gained from either First Class travel or Advance Tickets, so we booked off-peak Standard Class returns via a change of train at Leicester each way and I booked a city centre Mercure hotel (for which I collect Club Accor loyalty points towards future free hotel stays). Again this was a cheap room because for one night we really did not need much space.

George's Great British Fish and Chips

So off we went about midday on the Friday, having done several mundane market-day jobs at home before we left. Our shopping included a takeaway salad lunch to eat during the journey - the change of trains at Leicester provided an ideal opportunity to eat, followed by coffee bought from the Pumpkin café next to the waiting room.

Arriving in Nottingham we recalled that not long ago there had been a major fire which marred the recently refurbished station. A good tidy-up job had been done and if we had not known about the fire we'd never have been able to tell from looking at the station. Nottingham station is interesting in having the city's main tram line passing right over it and providing an excellent interchange with the railway below, but although I had chosen a hotel on the tram route we were in no hurry and decided to walk to out hotel.

"Just an ice-cream" for pudding ...

Our walk took us through the Broad Marsh Shopping Centre, which from my memory was never very special but now frankly is a dump. To be fair it is undergoing substantial rebuilding, but that looks long overdue. Having go into the place, through a building site and along half-closed roads, we then struggled to find the way out that we needed: such a pity because once we did find the outside world we were in charming city-centre streets which were really very attractive. A further short walk brought us to the pleasant street corner where our hotel was located and we checked in.

Mercure had given us a room upgrade, which was very nice, but unfortunately our air-conditioning was not working. That was one of several things that went wrong, actually, and the handyman was not able to fix it but lent us a very effective fan which did a reasonable job. We were given a free drink at the bar by way of compensation and when we checked out the next day we were given a discount on the room rate as well, the best they could do, really, so I will still be able to leave a good Trip Advisor review!

Having unpacked we set off for a walk around the city and decided that the only activity we needed that night was a good dinner, so we went back and changed, enjoyed our free drink in the bar and set off to a restaurant we had picked out on our walk, George's Great British Kitchen, one of the few independent restaurants we had seen. Apparently it began life as a fish and chip restaurant and still trades on that history but has a much wider, British, menu now. We both had haddock and chips but with different craft beers, and the most amazing ice-cream that came complete with a huge candy-floss! The photographs illustrating this article are all of this meal. The whole city seems to have weathered the recession better than most towns, and the tram system and city centre in general all feel very much better than I remember from visiting decades ago. When my wife and our friends were students here it was all very different: like most places the streets were full of traffic but now are very quiet and pleasant spaces.

Off to bed, and a decent night's sleep in spite of the choice between "hot" and "noisy" (we chose mostly hot with a touch of noisy), and in the morning we walked off to All Saints' church for our friend's celebration. Again, the tram route goes that way but we chose to walk. We had checked out and so had our luggage, but it was not much luggage for a one-night stay in warm weather. We met other friends as we approached the church and had a good time, especially those who had been at university together but also those of us on the fringe who just happened to be married to one of them, and after lunch five of us travelled back together, catching the tram straight back to the station for the next southbound train. We sorted out how to buy tram tickets and had just bought our five when a tram turned up. The ride through to the railway station was very smooth and pleasant: trams are such a civilised way to move through a city. We then followed the signs to the railway platforms and found seats on the London train that was already there, well ahead of its departure time: time enough to buy a round of coffee at Pumpkin (enough to earn a free one on my loyalty card next time I travelled!). The other three were all going on to London to their homes in Surrey but we changed at Leicester again for the train home to Stamford. Not such a long wait this time and we were soon on our way. Two of our friends from Surrey had travelled to Nottingham that morning and must have spent more of the day travelling than anything else, but at least when travelling by train it is possible to relax and enjoy the trip, and they had company on the way back.

I did take my camera with me intending to take photographs of Nottingham trams, but somehow the opportunity never seemed to arise, so perhaps I shall return one day.