Gedling Country Park Circular Walk: A Short and Sweet Trail in Nottingham

Free Parking

Car parking is free and there are 2 massive car parks. There are donation boxes if you’d like to give a £1 but this is entirely up to you. No pressure.

The 1899 Café

Next to the car park is the café and toilet block. The 1899 café is shaped like a big block of coal – a nod to the park’s industrial heritage 1899 – 1991. It serves fresh coffee and light lunches. It has an indoor and an outdoor seating terrace overlooking the park. The café is right next to a fantastic kid’s adventure playground; with a playground especially for toddlers and a separate and challenging park for older children, including a tower and slide shaped like a pit head, and an exciting zip wire which I’ll usually have a go on when no one’s looking! In the space between the café and the toilet block there is a drinking water fountain, a dog’s bowl of water, Woof Woof! And a display stand with children’s activity sheets.

Wooden Carvings

Walking up and away from the café, past the children’s playground, there’s a beautiful carved owl on your left. You can’t miss it and is one of many wooden carvings of animals and birds created by local artist Peter Leadbetter. Can you spot them all as you walk around? There’s a Rabbit, a Mole, a Heron, and many more to find.

The Ivan Gollop Bee Garden

As you walk up the hill look down the bank to your left to see a curious garden. It’s The Ivan Gollop Bee Garden and was designed for the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park, Knutsford in 2018. After the show the designer Jimmy McAdam, a young finalist, kindly donated his garden ‘Born to be Wild’ to the park. It’s a lovely garden that raises awareness of looking after bees in nature, by providing them with plants they love, for example Buddleia, Rosemary, Lavender, and Honeysuckle.

‘Bees are vital for stable, healthy food supplies… Bees are perfectly adapted to pollinate, helping plants to grow, breed and produce food. They do so by transferring pollen between flowering plants, The vast majority of plants we need for food, rely on pollination, especially by bees…Bees also pollinate around 80% of wildflowers in Europe, so our countryside would be far less interesting and beautiful without them.’ – Friends of the Earth.

The Tree Trail

I love trees and so the British Native Tree Collection is close to my heart. There are about 50 different species dotted around the park, and if you’re interested there is a little wooden post next to each one with its name and a QR code. If I was walking around with children, I’d get them to look up the QR codes on my mobile phone and read the info about each tree to me for reading practice. Alternatively, the children’s activity sheets obtained at the café will be just as good if you’ve forgotten your phone!

The Solar Panels

At the top of the hill on your right you’ll see lots of solar panels, about 23,000 of them! These generate enough power to provide electricity to 1,700 homes. I find it interesting that this has been a place for producing energy for 124 years. Originally it was a coal mine and now it’s a solar farm. Additionally, the methane gas which was released when Gedling was a mine is still trapped underground, and so this gas is now being carefully extracted using pumps and provides power for 3,600 homes every day.

The North Viewing Platform

This is the first of two viewing platforms. It looks out towards Lincolnshire and The Trent Valley and on a clear day you can see for miles. There are information boards that show you what you are looking out for, including Lincoln Cathedral and St Mary Magdalene Church in Newark and The British Sugar Factory in Newark which is usually easy to spot. If you own binoculars, I recommend you take them along.

The South Viewing Platform

Keep walking along the gravel path and you’ll come to the South Viewing Platform from which you can see Belvoir Castle on the horizon, Greens Windmill and All Hallows Church stands quite near down in Gedling Village. Both viewing platforms were funded by the EU Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. I guess the EU won’t be sending any more cash for our projects any time soon!

The Beacon

Next to the South Viewing Platform is a Beacon which was recently lit on 6 June 2022 to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. About 3,500 beacons were lit around the UK to celebrate her reign, as well as beacons in each of the capital cities of the Commonwealth countries. Beacon chains are a symbol of unity across towns and countries and are lit to celebrate big events.

Benches

There are plenty of benches to sit, relax on and enjoy the view. Many are dedicated to residents who have passed away.

Wild Meadow Area

Continuing along the path you get fantastic views of Gedling. There are lots of new houses springing up and there’s a new road snaking through below you, linking Mapperley to Burton Joyce and out to Southwell. There’s a Wild Meadow area and various information boards about the flowers and butterflies to look out for including Foxgloves, Ox-Eye Daisies and Poppies, the Orange Tip butterfly and the Common Blue butterflies. The wild meadow leads you down a steep slope to what is really the centre of the park. From there you can either loop back to the café and car park or keep walking around and circle back that way. There is a notice board next to the lagoon with a colourful map illustrating 4 different trails.

The Holocaust Garden

This is a brand-new addition to Gedling Country Park. It opened in March 2023. It’s a quiet place to sit and reflect on the millions who died during the Holocaust. In the centre there is a metal sculpture of a flame to symbolize keeping the memory alive, and there is a path and Cherry Trees circling it. At the moment it all looks a bit bare, but I think it’ll be a lovely place in a few years when the trees have matured, and the Wildflower Garden has blossomed.

The Memorial Garden

This has been created to remember the miners who worked at the pit and the 130 miners who died there. Five big arched metal pit props have been used as a centerpiece. They were originally down the mine to support the tunnels. There’s also a metal sculpture symbolising coal and flames and benches with scenes of the mine cut out of metal. It’s a nice place to stop for a picnic.

The Lagoon

The park has several small lagoons with ducks swimming about. Whenever I go, I only see a few, I guess they are nesting in the surrounding bulrushes.

The Walk Back to the Cafe and Car Park

From the centre of the park, you can either make your way back up to the café, along a winding path through the Silver Birch trees, or you can take a quick route up past the Holocaust Garden. But if you’re feeling energetic you could go left along the path, with the Memorial Garden to your right, and circle around and back to the café that way. And if that all sounds confusing because I haven’t explained it very well, then do look at the noticeboard overlooking the lagoon which has a map and the various trails marked.