Last weekend we missed going away for the May Bank holiday because some bastard stole our blue Triumph Sprint 1050 ST about two weeks ago... :(

So now that we have another bike (wooohooo!), we figured we'd make use of any time we have and booked ourselves into some random hotel just outside Nottingham for the weekend.  The new bike we've bought came with the standard Triumph Sprint panniers which were already fitted so we could get home after work, throw a few things in and head off before dark - mind you it gets dark at about 9:30pm here so it's not like we had to hurry much.  Not bad for day 2 of owning the new bike!

Yay! Our new bike and a very happy Jason :)

It took us close to 3 hours to get to our hotel in Eastwood with about a 45 minute stop at a service station for some dinner.  Not bad going.

This was also the first time we got to use our Sena SMH10 intercoms (wireless - bluetooth!) on a longer ride and yup, they are awesome.  Apart from making it a hell of a lot easier to communicate with one another (I no longer have to smack Jason upside the head/helmet when I want to tell him something), we can also listen to music from our iPhones via bluetooth.  Battery life seems to be really good so far as well.

We'd been told that Nottingham wasn't that nice - in fact, I believe the exact words were "Why are you going to Nottingham?  It's a hole."  At first I thought... hmmm... maybe it is a bit of a hole.  But the closer we got to the city center, the nicer it got. 

We had read about some caves in Nottingham so decided that would be our first stop.  In all honesty, the caves sounded a lot more interesting on their website than they were in reality.  For starters, the entrance to said caves is from inside a shopping mall.  A bit random and makes you wonder how 'real' the caves are.  It would appear that the caves are real but what you get to see is really only a very small portion of the very large number of caves that are hidden under Nottingham's surface.  The tour is one of those 'performance' tours where a couple of actors take you through and tell you stories about tanning (not sun-tanning - leather-tanning :P) and how the caves were used as war shelters during the WWII.  It was quite interesting but it didn't take long to see the whole thing.

After the caves, we attempted the Nottingham Castle - which is also in the city center.  Luckily we hit a patch of good weather but unluckily, we weren't really dressed for the occasion.  We both had our bike boots, thick socks, jeans, shirts and leather jackets on while the rest of Nottingham was in shorts, singlets and sandals.  So after an ice cream while sitting on the grass outside the castle, we decided to do the castle the following day and instead go for a ride to Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood allegedly rode around on his horse.

The country roads up to Sherwood Forest were very pretty and it was a nice cool walk through the forest.  Saw an old oak tree apparently about 1500 years old.  Poor thing was kinda propped up but still, pretty craaaaazzyyyy.

We finished the day off with a very filling meal at a very aptly named pub - "The Robin Hood" :)

On Sunday we took it pretty easy - breakfast at a cafe in town, some shopping (for moi... :D) and a walk through the Nottingham Castle.  We were a little disappointed that there wasn't more 'Robin Hood' type stuff in the castle but I guess he was just a legend so they don't have much to put on display about him.  It is really cool to see the history of a place like Nottingham though -- they have maps and details of buildings that were there hundreds upon hundreds of years ago.  I guess most of England / Europe is like this though, quite different to back home (Australia / NZ).

It rained on us a bit on the way back home but we got back safe and sound :)