Nottingham; Saturday, 06 January, 2018

I had a filling breakfast and headed out into town to take in some of the key sites. First stop of the morning were the city caves, located beneath the Broadmarsh shopping centre.

When I’d visited about 15 years previously there had been a limited audio tour of the caves, but as it was a Saturday there was a guided tour about to leave so I was able to go on that and found out a lot more than I had the previous time, not least of all being able to put into context the layout of the caves as being a system that would have been accessed from the foot of the cliff, but with the building of the shopping centre on top of it the cliff itself had disappeared into the building. At one stage on the tour you walk out what would have been one of the entrances and into the modern concrete box of the shopping centre above.

The caves are now part of the same organisation as what were called, when I last visited, the Galleries of Justice and are now called the National Justice Museum, so it made sense to buy a joint ticket and that was my next destination.

The Galleries of Justice had been interesting, if a little bit cheesy with the live re-enactors showing you what life as a Victorian criminal would have been like. The National Justice Museum is a considerably more learned institution – with the re-enactors taking you through the process of a court case in the Victorian court house. The museum has many exhibits on all aspects of justice, crime and punishment from the grim days of the past up to the modern day.

By the time I finished looking round the museum it was already mid-afternoon, so I grabbed a quick lunch before heading back over to the castle to have a look around the grounds and the building itself.

I hadn’t realised that the castle closed quite early, so I hadn’t seen all of the museums galleries when the custodians started to close everything up for the evening.

I had a bit more of a wander around the grounds – and then noticed another hefty looking shower approaching, so quickly headed back over to the hotel, making it back with a couple of minutes to spare before the heavens opened again.

I waited out the shower and then, once it was dry, walked down to the Old Town Square to find some dinner before heading back to the hotel for an early night.