23rd Jan: Leaving London; arriving in Nottingham

I left London on the 23rd. I booked a bus ticket again. The train was something like 30 pounds and took 2 hours, whereas the bus was 15 or so and took 3 hours.

Checkout went fine. I left the hostel a little before 10. The bus was to leave at 12. Collecting tickets went fine this time. I checked online while ordering to see if it told to provide some number when collecting tickets. It said nothing about it! But I knew I needed the number this time, so I had it (contrary to the trip to Brighton).

That had all gone quite quickly, so I had 1.5-2 hours to wait. Better early than late.

The bus station: Victoria Coach Station.

Obligatory shot of the day. Since people go in and outside a lot, there are some pidgeons flying around in here. The pidgeons like sitting up on top of this pillar behind me and sometimes need to poo off it. I found this out a little after this photo when some landed on my shoulder. Pretty gross!

The bus trip went fairly pleasantly. We drove up the M1 most of the way I think. Earlier, the weather reports said that there could be light snow on this day. They changed that a day or two before, but I was still looking out hoping that maybe there'd be some in a field somewhere. Unfortunately there wasn't. But it the scenery was pretty good. For the journey I had a nice soundtrack of Fredrik Thordendal's Sol Niger Within, Meshuggah's I and Catch Thirty Three, Devin Townsend's Ocean, and some other stuff. Good to hear some music again.

A huge power plant of some kind. 8 big chimneys. I think this is coal powered, since there were big stores of a black-ish mineral next to it. This is just a little before Nottingham. It seems to be called "Ratcliffe".

We landed at the Nottingham Coach Station. I didn't take a lot of pictures since I was feeling pretty tired and didn't really feel like being a tourist just yet.

I didn't really know how I was going to get to the university. I hadn't thought about it. I wandered around a bit trying to find some busses. Then I found a bus station which had some info on it. I figured out which bus I needed to take from that, then that the busses go from the coach station. So I headed back there and got on my way.

I wasn't really sure where I needed to get off. But it sorted out. I was quite disoriented, so I got some rough directions. Headed through the university grounds, which I then realised were pretty large and had some steep hills. It was exhausting lifting all my stuff through there. I had about 30kg in total.

Finally found my way to the hall. I met a girl from Netherlands outside who seemed friendly. She'd just arrived as well, and told me I should go to the reception. The lady at reception made me fill in a form and then took me to my room. I was pretty happy to finally make it. I hadn't had a room to myself in quite a while, so this was good.

After sitting down for quite a while, I made myself get to dinner. It is catered accommodation, so I get three meals per week during the week and two on the weekends. I was very hungry, and they had a pretty good ravioli, some various salad, and an excellent raspberry pie with custard. So I was very impressed with this.

Dragging my way through the university grounds, hoping it's not too much further.

A nice street in the university park with some accommodation buildings on the side.

The first sign pointing to the specific building I'm aiming for (Derby Hall). Hooray! I'm heading in the right direction.

My room. It has a fridge and I can strew my stuff around and lock the door.

Notice that the fridge is positioned directly in front of the heater and also in the centre of the room. Strange design decision. If the cord for the fridge was longer, I'd move it...

View from my window. I'm one floor above ground.

I think after dinner I got the internet working. I had to pass their security checks which involved installing a virus scanner and doing some other junk. errgh.

Eventually I collapsed into some kind of sleep. The next day I had an orientation welcome to get to.