Nottingham 2

Walk Details:
Date: 27/4/2007
Total ascent: 0m/ 0ft
Total distance walked: 0 miles
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: We stopped at a red traffic light. However, you can easily park in one of the surrounding residential roads.
Accessibility: The high point is probably in a fenced, inaccessible reservoir compound.

Top details:
Name: Mapperley
County top number: 146 of 206
Grid reference: SK 58790 43105
Height above sea level: 130m/ 427ft
Description/Notes: The highest point in Nottingham Unitary Authority is in a reservoir compound at the junction between Woodthorpe Road and the B684 Woodborough Road in the suburb of Mapperley. A point neat the M1 (see separate report) is also the same height.

The Walk:

It had been a long trek through slow traffic and hordes of speed cameras in the north of Nottingham to reach here – what Jim and I wanted more than anything was breakfast. Jim ideally wanted a Little Chef, but all we’d seen was a McDonalds on the wrong side of the dual carriageway. We decided to snag it on the way back from this top. It may have been hunger that resulted in a very lazy “bag”, or it may have been that we’d already done one top of the same height within Nottingham Unitary Authority, and therefore felt we’d done our dues.

We knew from reading the accounts of other baggers on the web that the highest point was “probably” within a locked and inaccessible reservoir compound. All other baggers had therefore just visited the closest possible point, on the pavement surrounding the reservoir.

We drove up the B684, which passed in front of the reservoir compound. It did indeed look impenetrable. The road was noisy and busy and fairly grim. We decided that it would be a complete waste of our time finding somewhere to park and getting out to take photos and GPS readings. Instead we stuck our feet out of the car whilst we were at a red light (which must have looked very strange to the people in the car behind. I then (feeling like a private detective) tried to take a drive-by photo of the radio mast on the reservoir. Unfortunately all I got were trees. So… not a very good private detective then!

Feeling we’d given the top far more attention that it actually deserved, we were glad to head back to McDonalds for Sausage & Egg McMuffins to fuel us up for more (and hopefully better) tops.