Adventures at Wollaton Park

Some of you won't be surprised to hear about the absurd adventures I've had at Wollaton Park with my children. I told Emil at the end of my first visit that I was ironing out the kinks so that when we go as a family, I'll know all ins and outs.

• Wollaton is a huge deer park near Nottingham city centre. It's a 10 minute bus ride.

Here are the highlights of our visits:

• Locate bus stop after visiting tourist center to obtain bus info. Get on bus. Can't find where to put money. Feel really stupid.


• Bus driver turns and says something to us en route that I can't understand. Repeats himself three times, sounds louder and more irritated each time. I heard "you" and "passengers" in his diatribe.


• After bus driver gestures at stroller, I figure I should move it.


• See small sign that says Wollaton Park. I guess this is where we get off??


• Bus driver points to small driveway- yeah, go in that way.


• Notice the sign says "vehicle entrance only"....Hmmm... should we go in here anyway?


• Notice metal grate/bridge over dip in road and metal fence lining drive. Where do you walk?


• After quick thinking on my part...we decide to go over metal grate. Quentin has to scale bridge sideways while holding the metal fence. I gingerly pull stroller over each groove- just wide enough for almost entire stroller wheel to fit into. How lucky! This was the kind of grate that if your foot fell through, you'd break a bone easily. Ground was about 12" down. So I tell Quentin to hold on tight and don't fall through.


• We make it! Luckily no cars drove by at this time.


• Where do you guess the pedestrian entrance was? Well, we notice on the way out someone walking through a little black door next to the vehicle-jaws-of-death-entrance. Unmarked.


• And I actually panic at the bus stop thinking we won't know which one to take back...but think about it...yeah, it was a long day. I had some wine that afternoon.

Visit 2 is less exciting, especially since we knew where to go in and out...

• After noticing how difficult the stroller moves through grass- I mean lots of grass... and deer poop, I tell Quentin we have to use the sidewalk from now own. We start walking toward the exit closest to the bus stop. There are signs everywhere indicating to not approach the deer because it's calving season and they can be aggressive.


• Guess where about 50 deer were hanging out that day? Yeah, in the field right along the sidewalk. I mean close to the sidewalk, too!


• We start walking naturally, no big deal. But one kept staring at us! Quentin asks why the deer keeps staring at us. And these are not small deer- they're like freaking moose over here! I get spooked, so we turn and take this detour into the grass and circle back to our small unmarked exit door avoiding the herd.


• I turn around and notice some people walking casually up the sidewalk behind us, not a care in the world for those deer. I hope we gave them something funny to talk about!