We pulled up first at Petersborough, which is a largish town not to far vaguely northwest of Cambridge. The guide book said it had a Cathedral and shopping. We'll, until my first paycheck we're not too keen on the shopping, but the cathedral was worth a look. Besides, it's nice just to wander around the towns in this part of thw world.
By coincidence, we arrived just in time for the morning service at 10:30. I felt decidedly out of place in my AC/DC T-shirt, but nobody seemed to mind (around here Sunday best still means something). Luckily for us, the London Chamber Choir was visiting and led the service, which was wonderful. For those of us who like that kind of thing, England seems to be a good place to spend some time.
We had to bail out a bit early as we didn't pay for enough parking. So, no pictures of the inside. Suffice to say that Petersborough cathedral is /enormous/ (it took 120 years to build the thing). It's also very old, dating from 1116.
Here is a photo we took of the western facade. It's big.
From here we drove further north west to Nottingham. This is the Nottingham of Robin Hood, Men in Tights fame. It's a big city now, but the tourism still seems to centre around the quite probably fictional tale.
The city is dominated by the hill/cliff upon which sat Nottingham castle. The castle was demolished centruies ago, and replaced with a mansion that was built in the 17th century.
As we arrived into town, we saw this couple on a heavily customised moped. Not sure what is going on there...
But our first stop (once we managed to park the car) was the Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem, which claims to be the oldest inn in Britain. It is set into the sandstone that the castle sat on, and indeed some of the rooms are carved into the rock. See the pictures to get an idea.
Apparantly, the crusaders used to stop here for a drink and a rest before heading off to Jerusalem - hence the name.
It was a great spot to stop for a drink and some lunch. Highly recommended. Also recommended is the local cask conditioned ale named "Olde Trip". Also, try a pint of "Cursed Galleon" if you ever get anywhere near here.
There is a museum next door called the Brewhouse Yard Museum. It's got some great stuff from the WWII period and earlier (I particularly liked the war posters encouraging women to come to the factories, entreating people to keep their gas masks handy, and one great one asking people to join the crusade against wasting bread), and some artificial caves that were used for air raid shelters. It's difficult to imagine what it must have been like here during the war.
Next stop was the castle grounds themselves, and the mansion which now contains an art gallery and museum. It has a pretty good view (see below) and it must have been fairly easy to spot the marauders coming. The museum had exhibits on the "Sherwood Foresters" infantry regiment (which has a distinguished history over many wars, up to the present), and on the history of Nottingham. Here are a few photos from the grounds and from the top.
The topiary on horseback is called Sir Bloomsalot. Droll.
These here are topiary versions of Robin and Marion.
It was getting late so we started heading for home. But before we headed back to Cambridge we thought we'd pop up to Sherwood Forest (the real one) just to take a photo.
It's quite a ways from Nottingham. If Marion visited Robin in the night, she had a *very* fast horse. It seems that most of the forest is gone though, and there was no sign of the Merry Men. We eventually found the Sherwood Pine forest (a pine plantation), which we thought was close enough. It's nothing particularly special, but it was good to visit such a famous place. So we took a photo and headed home.
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