The bus took us from Ripley to Nottingham, too damn early in the morning for me. The scenery is magnificent, though, and we passed thru the town of Kimberley, home to the brewery of the same name. Karen and Ian were supposed to meet us at Nottingham Castle, which resulted in the need to get on the road so early. But they had car trouble, and couldn’t meet us. Now how did we know this, you might ask? Well, Kim was hunting for a gift shop to buy some charms, this being Robin Hood country, and all that. So she asked the security guard at the castle gate for directions, where the guard promptly told her she had a phone call, which was from Karen. Small world, I guess. In any case, it was just as well, because I was coming down with a cold. We hiked down to the post office, and emptied all our recently acquired treasures into a package, and mailed it off to the states. By pack was now 7 Kilograms lighter, and felt like a feather.
We walked to our accomodations for the weekend, the Queens Hotel, featured in "Beer Bed and Breakfast". The accomodations are pretty marginal, but the pub is great. Shipstones Mild has good flavor for such low alcohol. Shipstones Bitter has real bittering hops in the finish. The owner/manager, Steve, was very good to us. He gave us a cider glass, two pub towels, and two ash trays. He also cooks on occasion, and managed to serve us some quite edible breakfast for a change.