TramRider #2 - What Nottingham is Famous For
World Cup 2006 England
Captain Baldy
The road to this blog started during a train of thought on an, erm, train, on the way to Nottingham University for the 2006 EPOP conference.That I had been invited to EPOP was a surprise at all, as EPOP is a psephologists' haunt and I am very much a (lapsed) qualitative social scientist.
My Nottingham itinerary also included 2 geocaches. A microcache in the middle of town, and the 'World Cup 2006' cache nearer the university.
My journey was galvanised by at least one rendition of 'Never be lonely' by 'The Feeling', a melodious love song and a fav. of me and Ms. Tortoiseshell. And so the journey proceeded past the Malvern Hills, Birmingham and Staffordshire - one of my favourite routes.
Got to Nottingham and boarded one of the posh new trams. I got off at the Lace Market and had found geocache ('Tramrider #2) within a matter of 15 mins. After a couple of hours shopping, and an all-day breakfast, I hopped on the bus and went to discover Cache no. 2 of the day - 'England World Cup 2006' in Woolaton Park. This arduous find can be read on the Tortoiseshell geocaching profile by clicking the button below.
EPOP was short and sweet. I turned up, had tea and buscuits. I saw my erstwhile psephological hero, John Curtice, from afar, with his suitcase, obviously just off the train from Scotland. I hoped he would come to my paper but he soon trundled his trolley suitcase away from the milling area and out towards his conference accommodation :-(
Nevertheless, the opportunity to meet David Denver - a legendary psephologist from days of yore - was worth the entrance fee alone. Having presented my paper, I left the conference barely 2 hours after turning up. Then eventually found the 2nd cache, and caught the bus back to Nottingham.
On arrival at Nottingham Station, I was told of a problem on the lines near Birmingham. This gave me the chance to try an alternative route, through Leicester - my old home city. It didn't get me anywhere near home but it still felt nice to be back - for 20 mins.
Was then told to get on a train to Derby, where I had 90 mins to wait. Went for a stroll outside. Didn't look too promising until I found the Brunswick Inn. A fine range of local ales, some of them railway-themed! Had a pint of 'Station Approach' and did some admin work.
On my way home, and suitably fuelled, the idea of a blog for Tortoiseshell took hold. The founding aims of the blog are set out below. The main rationale of the blog, I suppose, is to give an airing to my travel thoughts that I cannot otherwise do on my RL blog because of work restrictions. Not sure how it will work out, but here's to the Brunswick Inn! and the Tortoiseshell!
