I have a sponsor for a revised 35 History Bus Map and will be updating the map as soon as I have finished some existing commitments (bus boxes for a friend's wedding and a new Beeston Town Centre map for Beeston Civic Society, and a birthday commission for a friend).
The new map will highlight the 35's 'wild side', making more of the nature reserves it goes close to and and other 'overgrown places' within a few minutes of a 35 bus stop.
I hope to find the time to bring together the 35 bus walks you can find littered across this blog and my old parkviews blog and the beestonweek blog too.
I have it mind to create a series of themed walks around history, housing, people and the wild side. To start with the latter, a selection of pics from older blogs, complete with links:
River Leen by Bulwell Bog in view of 35 teminus.
Oldmoor Wood, Strelley, a tree creeper. 10 minutes walk from Wigman Road Top.
Oldmoor Wood at bluebell time.
View from Trowell Moor, a 5 minute walk from the top of Wollaton Vale.
A stream through Harrison Plantation Nature Reserve, 15 minutes from Bracebridge Drive enroute to the Derby Road, both served by the 35.
Old Nottingham Canal Nature Reserve path 10 minutes from Wollaton Vale.
Dunkirk Pond Nature Reserve, a pleasant 15 minute walk across Nottingham University's main campus from the 35 North Entrance bus stop.
The Tottlebrook footpath linking Nottingham University's main campus with Dunkirk.
Nottingham City Council cut-backs have resulted in Tottlebrook and its corridor of green not getting the attention it used to. There have always been blackberries to pick, but now they overhang the footpath in bunches like grapes.
This footpath follows the old course of the River Leen from Grove Road in New Lenton to Gregory Street in Old Lenton before it's diversion c.100 years ago. A short half-hour walk from the Derby Road Savoy Cinema 35 bus stop to the route's DErby Road Hillside bus stop within sight of where the present-day course of the Leen goes beneath the Derby Road. The walk passes the sparse ruins of the medieval Lenton Priory, then along beside the Leen to Hillside.
The Leen between Abbey Street and the Derby Road follows the course of the old Nottingham Canal and runs beside Nottingham's QMC Hospital and Treatment Centre. It can fairly be described as a green watery corridor.
Not as overgrown as it was, but the Priory (pocket) Park at the junction of Gregory Street and Abbey Street, still seems a little wild to me. Perhaps that's because it's one my favourite Lenton Places.
Lenton's Holy Trinity (parish) Church is on Church Street, across Lenton's historic recreation ground, and within view of the 35 bus stop beside the park. Much of the year the churchyard is overgrown which allows snowdrops and the Lenton Crocus to form carpets of white and mauve across the ground. The crocuses are said to have come from France with the Cluniac monks who founded Lenton Priory in c.1109 (it lasted until 1538 when Henry VIII's Dissolution brought about its closure and subsequent destruction).
And what makes all these links possible is a large fleet of orange coloured Nottingham City Transport buses on routes 34, 35 and 36.
Which nicely brings me to what has prompted this post, a BBC news story yesterday about a scenic bus route in North Yorkshire called 'The Coastliner', which makes just 4 journeys a day, and one of my favourite Radio 4 programmes, 'Open Country'. Whenever buses make the news I am delighted. They get scant attention, so the Coastliner story prompted me to email Open Country and suggest they come and spend a day exploring Nottingham's wild places on a 35 bus:
I've been a long time Open Country listener and, living in the Beeston part of the Nottingham conurbation, I particularly enjoy the urban episodes. The ‘Most Scenic’ Bus Route Vote news story (BBC News website today, 28 May) prompts me to contact you about my historybybus blogspot which promotes Nottingham City Transport’s 35 bus route between the city centre and Bulwell on the city’s north-west edge. During the course of its journey it passes by or near many ‘wild locations’, a good few of which are nature reserves. The 35 runs every 10 minutes during the day Monday-Saturday (3 per hour evenings and Sunday).
Nottingham City Transport have given several local groups buses for the day over recent years so that I could introduce folk to the joys of the 35 bus route.
The idea just struck me that perhaps Open Country could get a 35 bus for a day and fill it with Nottingham folk who Open Country could talk to about the city’s open country you can easily explore by 35 bus?
The idea is, I hope, novel, and will, of course, help publicise one of England.’s great urban bus routes, that is very wild in places.
Visit my historybybus blogspot to get an idea of just how of Nottingham can be fairly described as ‘open country’!
Yours
Robert Howard.
Nottingham City Transport have given several local groups buses for the day over recent years so that I could introduce folk to the joys of the 35 bus route.
The idea just struck me that perhaps Open Country could get a 35 bus for a day and fill it with Nottingham folk who Open Country could talk to about the city’s open country you can easily explore by 35 bus?
The idea is, I hope, novel, and will, of course, help publicise one of England.’s great urban bus routes, that is very wild in places.
Visit my historybybus blogspot to get an idea of just how of Nottingham can be fairly described as ‘open country’!
Yours
Robert Howard.
We shall see...
