Nottingham Pt 1

One of our 2012 trip's highlights, if you could call it that, was our determined effort to avoid  Swindon, a largely industrial city in the eastern reaches of Wiltshire. (Andy Partridge from the alt-quirk rock band XTC is a life-long Swindonian and something of an erstwhile cultural spokesman there.)

It was on the leg that would take us back to London from Wiltshire, after prowling the neolithic mysteries of Avebury and West Kennet Long Barrow, and the real reason we pasted a skull and crossbones on it was to avoid the Magic Roundabout, a truly malevolent intersection famously regarded as England's scariest place to drive.

Swindon's Magic Roundabout, from a safe distance.

 Avoid it we did.

What we didn't know when we left Watford, emptied of bladder and properly re-clutched with the Mercedes, was that the directions the EuropCar gave us thankfully guided us just past the SECOND scariest to drive in England, the six-circle roundabout at Hemel Hempstead.

At least they have some trees in the center. Hemel Hempstead roundabout.

Neither of us recall him even mentioning it, but had he sent us to the next exit north of Watford to gain access to the M1, this motorist-munching monstrosity awaited.

We didn't discover this bit of good fortune until weeks after we had returned to the States. Half tempted to go back and thank the dude all over again.

We were headed to Nottingham to meet up with our friends from Past Hauntings - Sean, his wife Sarah, his kids and associates - for a ghost hunt somewhere, but the weather was rainy and on the way north Sean texted us that Sarah was ill and they had to cancel for the evening. We had a room booked, so we were going anyway, but we now had the evening free.

The drive into Nottingham - through its inner-ring suburbs and winding, hilly streets - wasn't much fun, and we fumbled through a couple of bad turns before we found the Best Western Westminster (not sure why it was called that, since it was nowhere near Westminster,  a London borough) on Mansfield Road, one of the two or three main thoroughfares through Nottingham.

We had wanted to hit Church Rock Cemetery, the sprawling and vaguely foreboding graveyard right in the middle of town. 

But after dropping off the bags and spending some time chatting in the car park with Christopher, a friendly and slightly disheveled 30ish local who ambled up to us and expressed some interest in our Mercedes, we walked up the road to find that the cemetery was very, very closed, Locked tight. We'd leave that for morning.

Walking to the cemetery....something told me I didn't want to drive thru this.
But I did anyway, the next morning. 

Church Rock Cemetery - the next morning

Instead, a quick check on our GPS indicated that Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, the self-proclaimed "oldest inn in Britain" and one of Nottingham's most famous tourist attractions was a mere mile's walk from the hotel. Easy decision; the weather was holding, we were both hungry and in need of sudsy sustenance after a brutal day on England's roads, and we had wanted to see this ancient place for a long time.