Nottingham Part 2

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28th October 2017
I love driving. I hired a car for the weekend and it's amazing. Driving is my happy place. I drove to a super pretty happy place today: the Peak District. The drive was amazing. The view was amazing. The road was windy and hilly and had obstacles like narrow blind corners and horse riders and the like. Overall: amazing. I stopped for lunch at Bakewell: home to the famous Bakewell pudding and Bakewell tart. Of course I tried both but unfortunately neither were anything to write home about. Bakewell is the cutest town you've ever seen in your whole life though. There's a creek and old buildings and a farmer's market and a craft market and full of little town cuteness. Then I kept driving on to Buxton where I stopped to visit a cave. It was pretty but I think maybe the ones in Australia are better because they haven't had thousands of years of Roman and Medieval vandals come in and damage all the formations. I'm staying in Buxton tonight to continue my Peak District adventure tomorrow.

29th October 2017
I'm pretty sure cute is the only word you can use to describe small English towns. I walked through the gardens and town in Buxton and everywhere I look is just cute. It's the green grass and orange Autumn leaves. It's the iron scroll work little bridges with ducks and geese and little puppies running around. It's the architecture and sweet old ladies dragging their husbands to the market. It's cuteness overload everywhere you look. I stopped in town, at a little cafe in an old building on the corner of the main street in town, watching the world go by over breakfast before driving to Matlock. This is a similarly cute little town that kind of remindes me of the towns along the great ocean road. I went up the cable car to the Heights of Abraham to see amazing views and have a tour of an old lead mine before coming back to town. I walked along the river and stopped at a little tea house for afternoon tea before driving home.

4th November 2017
Nottingham is built on a massive slab of sandstone which has been carved out by people for thousands of years to create caves under the city. Today I went under the shopping centre to visit some of these caves. They were originally carved for shelter, then repurposed to home businesses like a Tanner, then back to housing similar to Coober Pedy, and most recently as bomb shelters in WW2. Now they are owned by whoever owns the land directly above them and are often used as cellars for pubs, or basements in homes, or in the shopping centre's case, a tourist attraction.

12th November 2017
Nottingham exists because of the Trent river. I've been here 7 weeks and have never even seen the river! So today is the day I rectify that. Sunday roast lunch cruise here I come! Perfect day for it with the sun shining, watching the horse riders and dog walkers along the riverbank, and rowers and kayakers on the water. Very peaceful.

19th November 2017
#ChocFest2017 Melton-Mowbray is a short drive away and they had their 2nd annual chocolate festival this weekend. With a false start yesterday, I finally got to go today to see chocolatiers from across the land show off their impressive chocolate making and decorating skills. Their crafts were truly amazing, mostly because they could spend hours around chocolate and still have enough uneaten to make their specialties lol. White hot chocolate down, and many taste tests later, we stopped for lunch to eat the town specialty: pork pie. This is a cold delicacy that looks, smells and (I assume) tastes like tinned dog food. I liked the cheese, bread and chutney on the side though! It feels like something I had to try once and thankfully never have to eat it again!

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