A magical mystery tour of Nottingham

My husband and I recently ran Victoria Embankment parkrun in Nottingham. We knew we had to run this one because not only did we meet in Nottingham, not only did we live very close to the parkrun, but the embankment is where we actually started running, way back in 1994!

Despite the early start, our daughter (and Hetty) came along for the ride and we ended up having a magical mystery tour of our old haunts.

I was never happy at university. Nottingham doesn’t hold many happy memories for me, but our tour brought some good ones back. We haven’t been back there many times since we left. We actually went to see The Wonder Stuff at Rock City (which was my absolute favourite place in Nottingham) back in May and found the city to be even worse than we’d remembered it. This time, we saw some of the nicer bits.

After the parkrun, the first thing we had to do was walk across the playing field by the embankment (The Meadows Recreation Ground) to see our old house at River View. It was a fairly new house when we’d moved in – in 1994, with my best friend and her boyfriend – and was much nicer than student houses. It was in a very tired state when we went back. The front door looked like it was falling apart. It was almost certainly the same front door we’d had in the 90s.

From there, we got back in the car (although it was hardly necessary) to look at our previous house, where we’d also lived with my best friend – and four other girls. One girl had been our friend. The other three were strangers when we’d moved in and we never got on with them. This house is on Rosebery Avenue and backs onto the Nottingham Forest ground. We could literally see a portion of the pitch from the top window. We heard a rumour recently that Nottingham Forest has bought up the whole road and intends to flatten it.

We then drove behind the Trent Bridge cricket ground and saw the Larwood and Voce pub where we used to go to do the pub quiz with my best friend and her boyfriend. We used to come last so badly that the quiz master would add a few marks on for us that we weren’t so far adrift!

My husband wanted to watch the Man Utd game in a pub. So he decided to drive up to the pub where he used to work – the Sir John Borlase Warren. This was our first time encountering just how much Nottingham, and specifically its roads, had changed.

It seems like every road we tried to drive down was suddenly a no-entry, a bus lane, a one-way system or had a dead end. If I had a pound for every time my husband said ‘But you used to be able to drive down here!’ on that day, I would be a rich woman. After many false starts, we made it to the pub. It was just before 11:30. We paid £2 to park.

Then we discovered a) the pub wasn’t opening until 12 and b) it wasn’t showing the football.

So he decided to go to Fellows Morton and Clayton on the canal – another pub we remembered from the old days. This time, we got the driving right. Straight down Derby Road, past the Savoy Cinema where we used to go, which still only charges £7.50 for a ticket, past the launderette we used to use and onto Lenton Boulevard. This was where our final flat was – just the two of us on Alderney Street.

We showed our daughter the flat as best we could. The local pub – The Grove – was closed in 2015 and turned into social housing. A Tesco Express had appeared over the road and the pizza takeaway had become an Indian takeaway.

We reminisced about our neighbours in the flats and particularly our short, intense friendship with the woman downstairs. She’d actually gone to the same secondary school as me, two years below. We had a great time hanging out with her. But I moved away soon after.

I remembered my walk to work along Castle Boulevard (I worked in McDonald’s Clumber Street in the city centre). If I had a 6am start, I’d get up at 4:55 and get the bath running (the water only heated up overnight) while I ate my breakfast. I would be on the bus to town at 5:35.

The Fellows Morton and Clayton was dog friendly and served food. But it wasn’t showing the football. It was packed with Nottingham Forest fans and there was a big police presence. A couple of the fans directed us to a pub in the city centre which should be showing the football – The Blind Rabbit. Luckily, it was also dog friendly and serving food!

After lunch, my daughter and I wandered the city centre and went to see Rock City and the Royal Concert Hall, where she’d done a dance competition earlier this year. I also showed her the McDonald’s where I used to work. The stairs had moved!

After the football, we got back in the car and saw my husband’s office. On his first day at work, my best friend and I had sat on the step outside, in army surplus coats and Doc Marten’s, to wait for him! We visited my first house and the house where my husband had lived for part of his first year and all of his second year. We marvelled at our stupid decisions at living so far from our respective campuses. I saw the convenience store where I’d paid my rent to the landlord – £30 per week, if memory serves me correctly.

And then we drove back home. Our magical mystery tour of Nottingham had been quite healing. It brought back memories I’d long forgotten. They weren’t all happy, but they definitely weren’t all sad either.