A weekend with Robin Hood and his not-so-merry men

Robin Hood is still alive and well in England. His part of the country still seems to have enough outlaws and unfriendly people to make it seem like his tribe still thrives.

We spent the bank holiday weekend up North in Nottinghamshire. Our decision to go there was prompted by the fact that some friends of ours were going there for a wedding and it seemed like a good idea to meet up with them and spend the rest of the weekend looking over a part of the country that neither Mr.R nor I had been to before. We had, by Thursday, made arrangements at B&B's in separate villages as we couldn't get accommodation together.Never mind, we thought. Nothing in England is so far away that you can't drive to it. So, off we went on Saturday morning, the bright sunshine and warmth a good omen for the next three days.

It's funny how the character of the countryside changes as you move from county to county, shire to shire. The places (and people) closer to London are more cosmopolitan, open to change, friendlier. As you move away from London, the towns and cities get smaller, traditional and conservative. It's like time has stopped still in some of the villages - you half expect horse drawn carriages and women in bonnets with bread baskets on their arms to cross the road. Some villages in Nottinghamshire and its surrounding towns are like that. Our friends stayed in Edwinstowe (and we moved there on Sunday night to a lovely 150 year old B&B complete with four poster bed and nautical bathroom - the best B&B we have been in so far). Edwinstowe, according to legend is the village where Robin and Maid Marian got married. This little village in the heart of Sherwood Forest is so tiny that if you stand at one end, you can probably see the other! Although Nottingham city itself has a large Asian and Afro population, the villages themselves don't see much people of color. Which perhaps explains the double glances, the cold hospitality or the unfriendliness in general. One learns to develop a thick skin though and move on feeling pity for these isolated and closed off people.

We spent Saturday and Sunday exploring Edwinstowe, Sherwood Forest and nearby woods. Sherwood Forest has a large collection of old oak trees, most of them hundreds of years old The main attraction is the "Major Oak", a giant tree with enough space in the trunk for a Mira Road flat. Robin Hood is said to have hidden there to escape from his pursuers. Mr.R and I also spent time spotting birds in the forest. We craned our necks with binoculars to catch a movement in the oaks - spotting birds in dense foliage is so much more difficult than in the open, as in Skomer. Our bird book helped in identifying some of the birds we saw. With birds on our brain, perhaps that's what we were - bird brained! (I wonder why that term came about- any ideas?)

Close to Nottingham, is a little village called Creswell, the home of the Creswell Crags. The Crags are part of a limestone gorge where archeological evidence of life in the Ice Age between 50,000 and 10,000 years has been found. There are several caves where bones and more importantly, cave art has been discovered in the rock. We took a lovely walk through the gorge and ended up on a little hill that reminded us of Bollywood style song sequences...

Bollywood seemed to be everywhere. On our way back home yesterday, we drove through Nottingham, hoping to find atleast one nice thing in the city that looked appealing enough for us to stop and explore. With all the road works, traffic jams, explosion of diversions, the already grotty city was getting less inviting by the second. After going round in circles, we decided we had seen enough and we turned back to the M1. We took a diversion to visit the town of Loughbourogh. We had read about it earlier and since it was on the way, we stopped there. We were pleasantly surprised to find a carnival on in the town centre. Little girls in white fairy costumes with wings attached walked about on stilts or just flitted about the place, pleased with themselves. The market square had a host of entertainment sessions starting with an Irish dance with four little girls in costume - one of whom was definitely Indian. It was startling to see a little brown girl doing an Irish dance, but that's England for you. Assimilation, I think, is the word. They were followed by the Sambassadors - a bunch of very lively musicians playing South American rhythms on drums and other instruments (maybe Mr.R can name them more accurately!). Lunch time saw 'Folk Foundasian' a two member troupe belting out, yes, Bollywood numbers - from 'Mere Sapno ki Rani' to newer songs. One can't escape Bollywood here - you see the influence when you spy Pakistani girls mouthing the songs, or browsing through the videos for hire at the library. All the animosity disappears when it's time for the cinema.

We had had enough by then. A quick lunch and we were off again on our 2-3 hour drive home, the motorways fortunately not yet clogged with people returning from the long weekend.

At home, funnily enough, BBC 1 was showing Robin Hood-Prince of thieves. It was a fitting end to our Nottingham adventure. There's a line in the film that Morgan Freeman, playing a Moor, says to Robin - " The hospitality in this country is like the weather here - cold" (or something to that effect!). My sentiments exactly.

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It is such a relief to have a 'normal' breakfast after three days of 'full English' breakfasts, lunches and dinners. 'Heart attack on a plate' is what our friends called it and the cholesterol and fat in the eggs, sausages and bacon is really enough to clog up everything, not just your arteries! However, a stay in a B&B is incomplete without indulging yourself once in a while. We're all going to die eventually, so why not have fun along the way, right?! :)