Safe travels through Sherwood Forest

Day 25

I arose in the morning, fortunately not sporting too much of a hangover, all prepared for my trip from Edinburgh to Nottingham.

Now, some of you might say “Nottingham? What would take you to Nottingham?”

Well, that is for the next blog entry.

Unfortunately, there had been a family staying in the room that kept on getting up throughout the night, slamming the door on their way out and not caring about how much noise they made. I referred to them in my head as the Swiss Family Robinson, as I believe they were Scandinavian or German and there were just so god damn many of them.

I had some breakfast, and caught up with Jes, who was a little bit the worse for wear after drinks the night before.

We had a very nice breakfast and final chat before I had to depart. I grabbed my bags and checked out of the hostel, sorry to see Edinburgh go.

I dragged my bags over to the train station and hung around, trying to figure out what platform I needed to head to. Unfortunately, the screens didn’t say, so I had to go and ask directions from the fellow in the information booth, who it seemed was being asked the same question over and over, although he handled it with a lot of patience.

Finally I established what platform I needed to head to and jumped on the train. I knew that it was going to be an lengthy train trip, so I had my laptop and note book at hand and caught up on a couple of blog entries.

I do understand the irony of this as I have now been back from my trip for 7-8 weeks and am writing this blog entry on the train.

The train trip was uneventful. It took about 6 hours too get to the point where I needed to change trains, where I caught a taxi to the next train station, and jumped onto the new train.

I continued my blog entries for another 2 hours, when I arrived in Nottingham.

I had looked at the maps for where I needed to head to from the train station, but saw that it was a decent trek (with a bag) so I got a taxi to the hostel I had booked into.

Now, being a completely new town, I thought I was giving the taxi driver the correct address, although it turned out that I had said “Street” instead of “Road”.

We were driving up a main road when I saw the hostel that I staying at, and drove past.

I told the taxi driver that we had gone past where we needed to go, and he told me off for the incorrect street/road issue I highlighted before.

He pulled a mad U-turn in front of traffic, and dropped me off on the side of the road about 100 metres from where I needed to go to.

I checked into the hostel, where I was greeted by a lass with a slight accent who showed me around. She was very friendly and helpful, and agreed that the room that I was staying in had a decided “man-funk” to it.

I headed down to the common room after dropping off my bag, and discovered that I was probably one of the few native English speaking people staying there. It was only a small hostel, and I discovered that most of the people staying there were international students doing a summer course at the university of Nottingham, which was at the end of the street that the hostel was located on.

I touched base with the hostel staff and asked about a good place to go and grab a bite to eat. I was pointed in the direction of the pub that was across the road, as they apparently had some very tasty pies on their menu.

I trundled across the road, looking forward to a tasty pie and a beverage or two before getting an early night.

Oh, how I should have know that this would not be the case.

The pub had sold out of their trademark pies, so I ended up grabbing a burger instead. I picked up a pint and headed up to the rooftop area.

I was drinking in peace when a couple of locals came up with drinks.

We engaged in some small talk, at which point the invited me across to join them once I had finished my meal, which I did.

Tom, Loz and Matt (yes, all guys) were Nottingham locals, and had been having a few beverages throughout the afternoon, but were still going strong. We had a good couple of drinks, several of them local brews suggested by the boys. I won’t go into details of what we spoke about, as many of these topics aren’t fit for blog entry, but we were joined later on by a young chap with a guitar, who was practicing for the open mic night that the pub was running.

We threw out a few requests, some of which he was able to play, but we enjoyed listening to him just play his guitar and warm up. I firmly believe that music for music’s sake is underrated in today’s society.

Once the open mic night started, we headed down to provide support for the chap that had entertained us with his music.

We had a number of drinks while listening to some good music.

Loz was a smoker, but had one of those electric cigarettes that you put liquid in of various flavours and ‘smoke’ that.

The great thing about these electric cigarettes is that you can smoke them inside since they’re not really ‘smoking a cigarette’.

I sampled several other local brews that the boys suggested, and resisted their urgings to head out and keep on partying.

I called it a night about 1am and headed back to the hostel to get a good night’s sleep in preparation of what had brought me to Nottingham:

Warhammer World.