Pension lawyer meets world: A winter weekend in Nottingham

I spent a year in Nottingham doing my law society course in 1985/6, and not really been back since. So this was rather a nostalgia trip. The ostensible reason for going now was to visit the son of a friend of mine who had started at the University of Nottingham (unlike me who attended the rather less prestigious Nottingham Trent University, which was then the even less prestigious Trent Polytechnic).

So plan was come up Saturday afternoon, meet Eoin for drinks and a curry, do some personal sightseeing and then Sunday lunch before going back to London.

It was coming up to Christmas, so the city was suitably lit up.

The main square hosts a Christmas market. God it was heaving. Like the inhabitants had never heard of Christmas before and were seeing what it was all about. Mainly buying over priced trinkets, crafts and food.

When I said took Eoin for a curry, that is rather an understatement. We went to the Calcutta Club. Which is an utterly wonderful Indian restaurant. Can't speak highly enough of it, both for service and food. The chicken starter was the most delicious chicken I have ever tasted. Didn't know chicken could be so nicely flavoured, but more importantly so melt in the mouth tender.

I stayed in a nice little bed and breakfast, which didn't skimp on the breakfast!

Now Sunday morning I wanted to explore Nottingham. Main square now a lot quieter on a Sunday morning.

But what I really wanted to see was Nottingham Castle. I wanted to see how it had changed from my university days, knowing it had had a £30 million renovation.

Now one of the features of Nottingham Castle (as Eoin had commented bitterly upon the night before, is that there is no castle. There was one, but it was demolished after the Civil War, and a mansion built on the site - see above. And of course there is one thing everyone knows about Nottingham (and its castle) - the presence of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. However, they are probably mythical but regardless have left nothing of their existence. So one can see that fitting out the castle as a general tourist attraction (and to justify the hefty admission price) was going to be a tall order.

The Robin Hood element was largely down to using an empty space with actors talking about the legend on big screens. Of course the catch with this is one could get the same from the internet from the comfort of ones own computer screen.

Plus a nice model of the castle as is thought to have once looked.

The mansion is nice enough, but the catch here is that unlike other fine mansions, it has no original contents

What it does house is the City's art collection. Which I rather enjoyed, not least because so few other people there. But I remember seeing it for free when I was a student. It contains no masterpieces. You wouldn't really pay to see it alone.

And there is a nice but small collection of ceramics. Again appealing to me but probably not to your average tourist.

It has a fine alabaster collection, which is displayed as well as an alabaster collection can be displayed, along with some stained glass.

And as I say a very attractive art collection without anything you would write home about. This is of the local Nottingham Goose Fair, so of local not national interest

Nice views of the city from the castle grounds.

So all in all I had a very pleasant Sunday morning, not least because there were so few people there. It did strike me at the time that they seemed to have vastly too many staff desperately trying to find a visitor to assist. Especially sad was a big fat bloke in medieval minstrel costume who was there to have one's photo taken next to. There were no takers.

So perhaps it should not have been such a surprise when three days later I opened my newspaper to find that the trust who had renovated and run the place had gone bust. Sad but there you are. Taking a lot of public money in grants, loans etc with it. Their demise was blamed on lower than anticipated visitor numbers. The surprise was why they ever expected higher numbers. They will have invested a lot of money in interactive displays etc but all of which are in the modern age rather underwhelming. Obviously everyone hopes these sort of heritage sites will be self financing, but reality is different. At best they can only raise some cash to subsidise the maintenance. As a viable source of general family entertainment they just do not cut the mustard.

Anyway, I had arranged to take Eoin to a fancy French restaurant for Sunday lunch. Fancy it was. I booked for 1 pm, recognising getting a student up on a Sunday morning would be challenge too far. I needn't have booked. There was space. Plenty of it.