A Nottinghamshire Ride

At the recent Nottingham meet, Chris, Chris and Nigel decided to go on a 36 mile circular ride from the site. Using cycle.travel to plan the route they had a very enjoyable afternoon, the highlight of which was a visit to Scarrington village, as suggested by Stephen. There are two notable points of interest in the village, sited next to each other:

Pile of Horse Shoes

In the village centre there is a pile of about 50,000 horse shoes, put there by the village blacksmith, Mr.George Flinders, between 1945 and 1965. The pile is about 17 feet high and is the largest such pile of horse shoes in the world! It weighs around 10 tonnes. Nottinghamshire County Council bought the pile in 1973 to stop the Americans buying it and shipping it off to the USA!

Scarrington Pinfold

Never underestimate the educational value of an ALC meet! On the ride I first learned about "Pinfolds", which were used from the medieval times to enclose stray animals. These were kept by the parish or manor and you could only recover your stray animal by paying a fine to the pinder. The pinder was the unfortunate person responsible for capturing the animals and putting them in the pinfold. Scarrington has a very good, circular example which was last restored in 2012.

Along the way we also met a 92 year old lady out riding her new electrically assisted tricycle with her daughter riding alongside. The daughter had just given the tricycle to her mother as a birthday present!

Finally there was an elderly gentlemen out proudly riding his "Doris Day Bike" (his own description!). I found out later that Doris Day had owned a red Schwinn Cruiser, the same as he was riding. He told me he had been riding the bike since he bought it in 1962. He looked about 50 years old but was obviously much older, further testament to keep on riding a bicycle if you can!

We got back to camp just before a thunderstorm started, a good day out!