Five churches, four bridges over the Trent, three stocking fillers, two pubs, one castle, and about ten million fallen leaves. It was a packed walk today.
Queens Drive Park & Ride is officially for people getting the bus into town, but there's a little bit at the back marked "Overflow Parking" which had a handful of cars in, so I parked there and snuck out through the tunnel.
Bridge number one was Clifton Bridge, again, in all its multicoloured glory. The River Trent was swooshing along after the recent rain, beautifully framed by autumn leaves under a grey but thankfully dry sky.
The cycle path took an abrupt left to run alongside the road for a short stretch. Then I approached bridge number two, the Wilford toll bridge, also known as Halfpenny Bridge. Sir Robert Juckes Clifton, who built it, has his statue near the old toll house. He was surrounded by grazing geese.
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| Wilford toll bridge |
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| Sir Robert and the toll house |
Next there was a long sweep of grass with a line of trees mirroring the curve of the river. I made the most of the opportunity to have soil under my feet instead of tarmac. There was a paddling pool to my left, shuttered for the winter, and huge yellow piles of leaves heaped along the embankment wall.
The trees on the opposite bank gave way to an eclectic mixture of buildings: a block of flats next to a boarded-up house with a turret; modernist glass windows butting up to half-timbered family homes.
Bridge number three was an elegant suspension footbridge. Apparently this beautiful structure was built to carry a water main over the river, and is still owned by Severn Trent. Well, it's better than a bit of reinforced concrete with spikes at each end.
On my left was a huge memorial arch. A sign informed me that Jesse Boot, founder of Boots Chemists, had purchased this stretch of land and presented it to the City of Nottingham, "to be preserved forever as an open space for the benefit of the citizens." Good man.
He had also provided money for the arch and the garden behind, which I wished I had time to explore, to commemorate those who fought in World War I. The inscription was later adjusted to include WWII, and plaques added for other conflicts.
I was approaching the blue and gold span of Trent Bridge, my fourth and final bridge over the Trent. This was the original crossing point at Nottingham - there is thought to have been a bridge here over a thousand years ago, although the current structure only dates back to 1871.
Shortly after Trent Bridge, I turned left up the Nottingham & Beeston Canal. This took me past a few more bridges, a long mural, and, horrifyingly, a many-eyed alien looming over a building in front of me.
A few months ago we visited City of Caves as a family, which was a very interesting tour of some of Nottingham's hundreds of caves. I found it difficult to visualise the city as a sandstone cliff overlooking marshes, when all I could see were the concrete remains of the Broadmarsh shopping centre. At this end, however, the sandstone is more obvious. I threaded my way up a cobbled path which was clearly a lot older than the new apartment blocks above my head.
I came out, with a gasp of amazement, right at St Mary's Church. Look at that window! Church number 1 was certainly going to be worth seeing.
This is what it looked like from the inside, and the stunning view towards the west end. I liked the golden angels.
Nottingham Contemporary art gallery is right above the City of Caves. I stopped in their cafe for an artistic slice of carrot cake - flowers, look! - and delicious coffee. The galleries are closed on a Monday but the shop had all kinds of nice things in. I purchased three of them for stocking fillers (shush, don't tell).
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| Weekday Cross |
Church number 2 was St Peter's. Formerly surrounded by slums and now surrounded by shops, it perches on a little mound next to Marks & Spencer. Inside was a charity Christmas card stall stretching the length of the nave, a beautiful modern altar surround, and a small but moving Black Lives Matter display.
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| St Peter's from Hounds Gate |
I passed the formidable gatehouse of Nottingham Castle (yes, that was my one castle) with a plaque outside saying that the Robin Hood Way starts here.
A gated road led me into The Park, an exclusive housing estate full of gables and turrets and well-tended gardens. An alleyway at the far end suddenly decanted me into a far less exclusive housing estate, full of bins and cheap-looking brick.
I took a detour to see Thomas Helwys Baptist Church, which looked interesting for two reasons: firstly because the building is octagonal; and secondly because it is unusual for a Baptist church to be named after a person. Thomas Helwys, according to their website, was a local gentleman who founded the first Baptist church in England in 1612. I feel I should have heard of him before.
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| Church 3: Thomas Helwys Baptist |
A short distance further on was Holy Trinity, Lenton, opposite a Sikh Gurdwara. The smoke-stained exterior looked rather forbidding, but the interior was all blue carpet and scattered chairs, and the window above the altar was full of flowers. I only had a quick look because I don't think the church was meant to be open; the girls tidying up from a coffee morning looked a bit surprised when I walked in. So sadly I missed the famous font which came from Lenton Priory.
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| Church 4: Holy Trinity, Lenton |
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| flowery window |
Along Leen Gate to the River Leen and the vast bulk of Queen's Medical Centre. I'm fortunate to only know this place by reputation. Over on our side of the M1, a transfer to QMC means that your injury or ailment is too complicated for the Royal Derby to cope with, and then you know things are really serious.
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| QMC and River Leen |
QMC claims to be the only hospital in the country with its own tram stop. I ducked under the tram lines and came out on Abbey Street. I'm usually more interested in churches than pubs, but the beerhouse in front of me caught my eye. The Johnson Arms' green-tiled exterior made it look as if it were related to a Tube station. In fact it used to be a canalside pub - this stretch of the River Leen was the Nottingham Canal - called the Abbey Tavern.
Round the corner was the Boat Inn, which sounds like it should be a canalside pub but isn't, quite. The Boat is a solid-looking building that was once owned by the Home Brewery.
Near the pub was a forlorn stub of stone on a fenced-off patch of grass. This is one of the few remains of Lenton Priory, a Cluniac monastery founded around 1102. It was dissolved in 1538. The prior and several of the monks were executed.
The sculpture garden on the next corner gave me a few more snippets of the history of the priory, and a nice bench on which to eat lunch. The carved stone looked ancient, but was commissioned in 2018 and inspired by the priory font which I didn't see. There was also, bizarrely, a table tennis table, a very out-of-season clump of snowdrops, and a man walking past in dressing gown and pajamas. I assumed he was a hospital patient.
The fifth and final church was the Priory Church of St Anthony, of which the sculpture garden was presumably once the graveyard. This little church was originally the chapel for St Anthony's Hospital, in the priory grounds. After the priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, it became Lenton's parish church for a while, until Holy Trinity was built.
A short walk down the road took me to Nottingham and Beeston Canal again. I followed it past boat builders and fishermen, duck hotels and scrapyards, until I was finally back where I started.
Trent Valley: Clifton Bridge to Nottingham, 3 November 2025
13.4 km / 8.3 miles
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