Nottingham is lovely, actually.

This is a great place to be, and I will tell you why and where to go.

Last week I ran into a former student walking past the Olde Trip, a pub that boldly (and not uncontroversially) boasts about being the “oldest inn in England.” He shared that he was leaving Nottingham soon and it was only just hitting him that he was about to go start his master’s degree in London. “I was just thinking, walking through the city,” he said, “that Nottingham’s really nice.” Coming up to a cobblestone street lined with welcoming pubs, people gathering in the late afternoon sun as the trees rustled, I could only agree.

Not the exact moment, but the exact place.

All associations with the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood aside, and notwithstanding the tourism board’s desperate attempts to milk those associations for all they’re worth, Nottingham is not a top destination for travelers in the UK. The East Midlands is old coal country and contemporary farmland; it claims neither the vistas of the coast nor the dramatic mountains found further to the west. International touring acts tend to skip over us in favor of Birmingham. When family and friends have visited, I’ve struggled to find many archetypical “attractions” to occupy their time. I once heard someone from up north describe Nottingham as the Akron, Ohio of England—a jaw-dropping insult. Last month, a coworker took the bus through the city center (“downtown” in US parlance) and just shook her head.

This post is a counterpoint to the pile-on. Nottingham is lovely, actually, and it’s been such a good place to live for three years. If you’ve passed through as a tourist, you’ve probably stopped by the Robin Hood statue, which I cannot emphasize enough is just a statue, and you’ve probably gone to the castle, which I cannot emphasize enough is not actually a castle (it’s mostly an art gallery these days), and you’ve probably been like, WTF. Let me guide you elsewhere, dear reader. Nottingham will not coddle you, but it loves you all the same. Here are 10 under-appreciated places in my fair city that I will really miss when I’m gone.

(Caveats to locals! These are city center-centric recommendations because that’s where I live. Your parts of the city are also lovely, unless you live in the weird high-rise developments behind the train station next to the Hooters. Respectfully, what the fuck.)

1. The cemetery (+ arboretum)

Are we surprised that the resident witch put a cemetery at #1? Nottingham General is smack-dab in the middle of the city but feels a world removed. Stone stairs descend past rosebushes from street level, and then you’re in a brick-walled green space where wildflowers grow freely over old grave markers. It’s not a terribly large space, but my hours wandering here have surfaced the one raspberry bush in walking distance of my house, an inaccessible patch of towering foxglove, and a smattering of surprise hyacinths every spring. The gravestones tell of people born in the 18th century in some cases! How quickly time can flow.

I can tell you where the blackberry brambles are least picked over and the conkers most likely to fall. The yarrow should be about to blossom right now. And for as much time as I spend here, it continually gives me something new: just a few weeks ago I found a corner of mugwort, all silver and ready. The earth feels most sacred in spaces where we honor those returning to it, where we participate directly in cycles of life and loss. That such abundance comes out of a place meant to mark death is the most magical kind of gift.

I spend so much time in the cemetery that it is the first possible location Instagram offers me for all of my photos (insert melting face emoji).

For many, cutting through the cemetery is a more pleasant path from the campus of Nottingham Trent University up to Derby Road and Canning Circus. Sometimes I’ll tack onto this walk a visit to the arboretum, which is also vaster than it appears on a map. Here’s your inner-city picnic spot; here’s where you can wile away an afternoon on a carpet of pink petals in the spring. It is truly beautiful.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: Church Cemetery, a walk through the Park (the neighborhood, not a literal park) and the sandstone tunnel, Wandering Goblin Coffee, blackberries everywhere

2. Whatever’s happening at St. Mary’s

Like many cities in England, Nottingham is home to several churches that have weathered centuries of war and commerce and change. You can see one of the more dramatic transformations in the Pitcher and Piano, a church that is now a thoroughly mediocre bar, or you can go up the road a bit further to St. Mary’s for gorgeous stained glass and alcoves heavy with whispers stretching back to the 14^th century. Best not to miss the magnolia tree on the grounds if the season is right.

The religiosity of it all aside, St. Mary’s hosts a wide array of events, most notably craft fairs and vintage clothing swaps. Once a year it’s also home to the Coffee Festival, a truly spectacular event where you can get unlimited full-size coffees from all sorts of local roasters for about £20 if you plan correctly. It’s an excellent way to get to know local makers, introduce yourself to the British tradition of the kilo clothing sale, and enter another plane of existence via caffeine overdose. (Yes, this is mostly a plug for the Coffee Festival.) I would highly recommend checking out whatever’s on offer on any given weekend.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: if you like churches, the other old old old one nearby is St. Peter’s. Personally I like the cemetery behind Holy Trinity in Lenton, to no one’s surprise. St. Mary’s is in the Lace Market, which used to be the hub of the British lace industry and is now home to a bunch of nifty restaurants. The Angel Microbrewery (and the Chapel, an attached local music venue) is a standout, particularly for being able to make any dish on its menu vegan.  

3. Small Food on the weekend

Fair warning that I am food-motivated and so this list revolves around food. Worth a special mention is Small Food, a bakery and local food center (for lack of a better term) in Radford. It’s tucked away in an old primary school that also houses a coffee shop and art gallery. The space is bright, airy, and filled to the brim with produce straight from the fields. In other words, my kind of place.

Small Food has been instrumental in the local “slow food” movement and is the only place in the city proper where you can reliably get blood oranges, Jerusalem artichokes, and wild garlic you don’t have to pick yourself. It’s currant time right now! In the fall I get massive Cinderella pumpkins here. The staff are so, so kind, and it’s not uncommon for a relatively short line of folks to linger as in-depth conversations ensue. And of course, the bread is excellent. A bit off the beaten path but well worth a visit for the joy it will inject into your morning.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: This is truly the only place of its kind in Nottingham city center, though worry not; the next item is a bakery too. In the general slow food/a little crunchy basket I’d also place ShopZero, a zero-waste store that often hosts foraging classes and has effing delicious oat shakes in its fridge.

4. Tough Mary’s on the weekend

Tough Mary’s, to what shall I compare thee? Let me offer an anecdote: a friend was staying with me and I offered to go get us pastries from Tough Mary’s. He was fine with this but not overwhelmingly enthused. Oh ye of little sourdough faith, I told him with a smile. I brought him just a plain croissant and watched his eyebrows leap after the first bite. “I shall now worship at the altar of Tough Mary’s, for this is truly the zenith of croissants on this cold craggy isle,” he said around mouthfuls of sinfully delicious buttery flake. (He did not, but you get the point.)

In short, Tough Mary’s is a fucking great bakery, and the queues stretching down the hill on the weekends speak for themselves. If you can manage to get a piece of their focaccia right after it’s come out of the oven…my word. The hidden heroes are the peanut butter chocolate date bars. They also usually have some creative variety of babka and, increasingly, proper cookies (not British biscuit nonsense). I come here every Saturday for breakfast and it is just the best thing. Recently they introduced a tip screen, which has baffled every British customer, but please go give them all your money.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: I love to stop by Little Plant Guys, a plant shop just up the road. The other brick-and-mortar bakery I’ll recommend is Breadmill, across town at Sneinton. More on Sneinton in a bit.

5. The rooftop of the King Billy

There are many varieties of the traditional English pub, but what you really want in a well-rounded experience is a) twisty-turny backrooms, b) plenty of local taps, c) periodic local music acts, d) a rooftop, and e) explicit safe spaces for queers. Enter the King William IV, better known as the King Billy, your happy lefty getaway with Irish trad nights and a vegan quesadilla place on the roof. Yeah, you read that right. It rocks. Before the appearance of actually-good Mexican food in the UK (a very tall order) there were wood-fired pizzas, so you can trust that the proprietors here make consistently good decisions. The selection of guest beers is just a little different and does not usually taste like water (also a tall order for the UK). And there’s a pool table! I am a simple woman who wants simple things and spicy drunk food and Pride flags really do it for me. The King Billy always, the King Billy forever.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: it would be remiss of me not to mention my local, the Sir John Borlase Warren, which I love. Go downstairs at Cured and you can drink on the canal in a much less chaotic way than at other canal-front pubs; Canal House is big but overrated, often full of loud football fans, and not great in the food department.

6. The tea room at Debbie Bryan

I fucking love “make your own [whatever]” shit. Teach me how to create something beautiful for my home! Let me craft art imbued with effort and imperfection! Give me a peek at a skill and subsequently more appreciation for those who do it full-time! This is my JAM.

So you can imagine how delighted I was when a few friends suggested meeting up at Debbie Bryan, a place I had never heard of, and I walked into a world of paper snowflake chains and dried flower bouquets and tables set up with watercolor palettes. There are two Debbie Bryan shops in the Midlands, and they all offer workshops where you can do everything from making lace art to painting antique teacups. If that’s not your speed, they also have retail sections where you can buy little bits of art and café sections where you can sit and sip afternoon tea. I love places that are totally unassuming from the outside but contain entire worlds within, and it is well worth skipping over the high street tea rooms and ending up in this colorful, joyous space.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: One thing Nottingham’s really good at that’s not immediately apparent to outside observers is “make your own”-type classes. Two really popular providers are Sap Plants (make your own terrarium!) and Hallo Ceramics (make your own pinch pots, and maybe even do so at Rough Trade Records, because we have one of those too). My favorite class I’ve ever done is a silver ring workshop at Bonearrow. I still wear the ring I made every day.

7. Iremongers Pond

Let me take you back to nature for a bit, and also south of the city center. Get off the tram at Wilford Village and take any of the paths down into the elder. This is Iremongers Pond and Community Orchard, another liminal space where you can leave the city behind. I still don’t think I’ve managed to explore all the trails here. The standout, of course, is the orchard itself, where folks are free to pick whatever they can use. On the other side of the pond are cherry trees, and further along, the path turns into a riverside walk. It is a wonderful escape.

The bees at Iremongers in the summer are nature’s choir.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: On the opposite side of the river is Victoria Embankment, where you can see marked on a stone wall how high the water has risen over the years. It’s much further north, but Broxtowe Country Park is another underrated green space that’s never too busy and is easy to get lost in. And Wollaton is fantastic for deer sightings, though you can’t forage there and that’s bothersome to me personally.

8. Sneinton Market

Sneinton! Sneinton! Sneinton! Nottingham’s creativity converges here. On any given day, you might come across circus performers spinning from silks, pagans calling to the four directions, and a roving quesadilla cart. (If it weren’t obvious, quesadillas are a very important pillar in my life.) I couldn’t possibly point to all the shops and artisans that make up this vibrant space, but a smattering of my favorites:

• The Watered Garden, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves of houseplants

• Luisa’s Vegan Chocolates, an entirely-vegan chocolatier with bars and truffles galore

• Wolf Wytch Apothecary, all of your gothic fantasies rolled into a tiny shop stuffed with candles and soap and other treasures

• Bonearrow (second mention!), home to jewelry self-described as “magic in metal”

• the original Blend, Nottingham’s only purveyor of the hazelnut milk latte, which is a perfect drink

I could wander here for hours. Sometimes I do. Three cheers for supporting your local artisans and makers.

9. The five-story Waterstones

Okay, so Waterstones fired an employee for standing up to transphobes, and any large chain is going to be embroiled in somewhat gross politics. We should probably take our money elsewhere. And, how we relate to spaces can be layered. I have a distinct memory of venturing into the Waterstones on Bridlesmith Gate for the first time after living here for almost a year and something in my chest unwinding. The shelves and shelves of books go so far back into the building that I lose a cell phone signal somewhere near the historical fiction. Up four escalators is a floor devoted entirely to fantasy and science fiction, like a spire at the top of a castle. Whenever I need a hug and won’t soon get one from an actual person, I come here. Whenever I need to re-center my energy, I come here.

So, yes: five floors of words and magic. We didn’t have a public library in the city center for ages, so as messy as it may be, gratitude to this cavern of books and the comfort it’s given me.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: Nottingham’s radical bookshop is Five Leaves, which has a very different selection and is where to pick up all your leftist/queer/occult/poetry/pro-Palestine needs. Controversial opinion, but I actually think one of the best bookstores in the city is the museum store at Nottingham Contemporary, the art museum. It’s small but extremely thoughtfully curated, especially if you like feminist writings and books about plants.

10. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem

We started here, so let’s bring our journey full circle. From the “oldest inn in England” marketing, you might expect this place to be gimmicky, and it is refreshingly not. It is, in a word, cool. Like many pubs and restaurants in Nottingham, it’s built into a rockface, giving the whole place the feel of being in a cave (because it literally is). If that’s not your vibe, there’s also a lovely outdoor area full of big trees and long tables that makes for a shady spot to hang out when the weather’s nice. The regular crowd is fun and lively, and there are plenty of historical tidbits throughout the inn to stumble across. (Find the “ringing the bull” game and win it—you’ll get a sticker and bragging rights.) Ghost tours of the city also leave from out front, though in my experience the quality of these depends heavily on whatever guide happens to be leading your tour, so proceed with caution.

Honorable mentions in the area/in the same vein: in a feud with the Olde Trip is the Bell Inn, which also claims to the oldest inn in the city. It’s on Angel Row, near the Taco Bell, where I am not ashamed to say I spend an inordinate amount of time. The vibes in the Bell Inn are very different and much less me, but it can also be a good time.

Cheers.