There are two Mapperleys just outside Nottingham, on opposite sides of the city, which must have been confusing before postcodes, although I guess it helps that one is in Nottinghamshire and the other in Derbyshire. We went for a circular walk that started in Mapperley village, the one in Derbyshire. We walked footpaths that criss-crossed what is now peaceful farming country but which until the middle of the 20th century was an industrial landscape.

We walked along the path of an old railway that ran to Mapperley colliery, then northwards along the Nutbrook trail, the brook being all that is left around here of the old Nutbrook canal (closed 1895). Another old railway took us to Shipley Country Park, on the site of Woodside and Coppice Collieries. Here the old rails of the railway to Coppice Colliery (closed 1966) are still embedded in the roadway. We then swung westwards and southwards to Mapperley Park and then eastwards along the lane to Mapperley village. Here we managed to resist the temptations of the pub!