New Year’s Day can be both an inspiration to make changes and plans for the forthcoming year as well as resolutions that are likely never to be kept. I like to think of it as an opportunity for hope and reflection and the best way for me to achieve this is to go on a bike ride. I expect you thought that might be my conclusion.
One of the enjoyable things to do on a New Year’s Day bike ride is go somewhere you wouldn’t normally. This year I decided to ride through the city of Nottingham whilst it was dead to traffic and the only people I came across during the first hour of my 07.30 start were the people who had not yet managed to make it home from their late night revelry. The Gravel Notts Route 7 (GRN7) already has a well worked out route through the city that takes advantage of as many gravel tracks and traffic free options as possible. Today I decided to utilise part of that route, National Cycle Network 6 and return along the river Leen Greenway. However, I had a different goal to that of GNR7. My goal was to visit and photograph the Nottingham Park Tunnel.
The Park is a rather upmarket semi private residential area just off the city centre. The wealth there is obvious even today with grand houses all around and the Nottingham Castle Tennis Club at its core. Sitting high above The Park stands Nottingham Castle on its sandstone plinth. There are various entrances with large wooden gates denoting that this is a special place reserved for those of a certain station in life.
Anyhow, enough of the working class chip on my shoulder, no doubt the Duke of Newcastle was an honest guy who accumulated his great wealth and assets through endeavour, oh and a family peerage that dates back to their support of the loyalist cause. As well as owning the Park the Duke once owned Clumber to the north of the county, featured in the Gravel Notts routes.
It was the then Duke of Newcastle who commissioned the tunnel as a spectacular entrance the Park in 1885. The idea being to provide access to horse drawn carriages. The project was an engineering disaster with the eventual gradient being too steep for its intended transportation. So, we are left with a piece of abandoned engineering. Two stretches of tunnel unsupported through the sandstone with an open air section in the middle. After entering the tunnel from Tunnel Road you reach a dead end to traffic and an impressive stone staircase that winds its way up onto Derby Road.
The structure is just one of the unusual and interesting things that I shall write about in a Gravel Notts publication (hopefully) later this year. It’s another reminder of the geological history of our fine city and well worth exploring although it is literally a road to nowhere.
Sources of information various public.