Hello, thank you very much for watching. So, I'm back on the River Trent. I spent a few
days up at Swarkestone. In particular at Swarkestone you can get a car right next to the boat.
So I man-handled a brand new washer / dryer from my car, inside Alice and It's working
really, really nicely. It's such a change being able to dry my clothes rather than wet
damp ones hanging all over the boat. Normally at this junction, I turn right and go down
the River Soar but today, I'm going to travel East towards Nottingham.
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It's not a long journey today. The junction here is where the River Soar meets the River
Trent and the Erewash Canal. The river passes the sailing club at the junction and continues
east towards Cranfleet Lock. Once you go through this lock it opens out into the wide river
which winds its way past Attenborough Nature Reserve, which is just to the north. The river
becomes very popular with boats towards the Nottingham western suburb of Beeston where
I'll moor up for the night.
Just south of here is the village of Gotham. You may not have heard about it but what if
I called it Goth-am. The historical madness from the residents of this small Nottinghamshire
village has direct links with Batman and Gotham City.
King John and his entourage of courtiers and soldiers became notorious for taxing people
and stealing from them. He was the villain in the legend of Robin Hood.
Gotham was en-route to Nottingham Castle and any road he travelled on, became a public highway.
The villagers didn't want this so came up with a plan to pretend to be mad to change
the kings plans. In those days it was thought being mad was infectious.
They tried to build a fence around a cuckoo to prevent it from escaping. The village men
would travel to Nottingham market to sell their cheeses. They rolled their cheeses down
local hills hoping they'd roll to the market.
The village blacksmith had a wasps nest in his roof. He tried to destroy the nest with a
red hot poker as the wasps were stinging his customers. Instead, he set fire to the roof
and burnt down his cottage as well.
The trick worked, leading to the saying: "There are more fools pass through Gotham than remain
in it". Villagers were also dubbed the Wise Men of Gotham.
Word of the supposedly foolish acts spread, and they were collected in various books including
The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham which was published in 1565.
The American author Washington Irving became aware of the tales and was the first person
to link Gotham in England with New York in the United States.
He repeatedly referred to Manhattan as Gotham when writing. In 1807 he compared the wealthy
New Yorkers as being Mad like Gothamites. Bob Kane was a comic book artist and writer
for DC Comics and in 1939 he created the Batman character and based him in Gotham City.
Just coming towards Beeston now. It's really, really popular, lots of cruisers, lots of narrowboats,
both on the river and up on the canal. As you come past Beeston Marina, you do need
to stay on the north side of the river because there's a great big weir very close to the locks.
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My route now takes me along the Beeston cut into the centre of Nottingham. This is a busy
area with a full set of facilities and a well-stocked chandlery at the marina. There's lots of local
shops and pubs as well as easy access onto trains and buses.
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ya later.