Back in September 2021, during the Week Off Work Tour, I visited Nottingham to have a ride on the Nottingham Express Transit (NET) trams. I didn’t do them all in one day, and I planned to come back and do some more of them. On 7th March 2022, I did just that when I took the train to Hucknall and rode to almost all the tram stops north of High School.
I caught an early train (0818) from Burton to Nottingham, from where I changed to the Worksop-bound service which called at Hucknall, a combined train and tram station which is the northern terminus of the NET network. I caught the next tram to the next stop at Butler’s Hill. From there, I walked about twenty minutes to Moor Bridge tram stop.
Next to Moor Bridge tram stop is a concrete factory (that is a factory which makes concrete, not a factory made out of concrete) which was giving off some awful fumes. Fortunately, the tram soon arrived in the smoky haze, and I rode it two stops to Bulwell. I had previously been to Bulwell railway station in 2019 on a rainy Saturday morning. I walked from there back up the line to Bulwell Forest tram stop. From there, I got back on the tram and rode to Highbury Vale, the two-in-one tram stop.
Highbury Vale has two stops separated by a small green area. One of them is on the Green Line, and the other is on the Purple Line. I switched to the Purple Line to ride to Cinderhill, from where I walked to Phoenix Park, the terminus of the Purple Line. These two stops are on a former colliery railway track. The colliery closed in 1986 and a business park is now on the site, along with a large woodland with footpaths. I rode back to Highbury Vale, where I alighted and started walking on a riverside path towards David Lane tram stop.
The weather in Nottingham was dry, cloudy and very cold at the time I was there. It was a pleasant riverside walk to the next stop, past a recreation ground and the football ground of non-league Basford United FC, who play in the Northern Premier League Premier Division.
I caught a tram (the tram service is very regular, with trams usually running every seven minutes at off-peak times) and rode it three stops to Radford Road. From there, I took a short walk to the next stop at Hyson Green Market, where I caught another tram to the next stop at The Forest.
It was time for a rest from riding trams, and so I walked through part of the Forest Recreation Ground and down the road to Nottingham Arboretum.
The next stop I went to was at High School, from where I caught a tram to Shipstone Street. From there, I had a fairly long walk up Radford Road, a mostly industrial busy road, over the Western Boulevard road and up to Basford tram stop, my last tram stop of the day. At Basford, I found out that I could quickly get a train back to Nottingham from Bulwell, just as long as my tram wasn’t too late. There was some jeopardy as my scheduled tram disappeared from the dot matrix display at the tram stop, but it quickly reappeared and arrived a couple of minutes later.
I rode the tram back to Bulwell, and then crossed the footbridge to the train platform, where I waited ten minutes for the service to Nottingham, where I caught the train back to Burton on Trent. I have many tram stops still to visit in Nottingham, so hopefully I will be back there sometime to cross them off the list. Thanks very much for reading.
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