Nottingham’s loss is Cambridge’s gain

This letter to the editor is straight out of the once-bitten-twice-shy school of tourism.

Nottingham Evening Post, 26 January 2010:

Letter: We won’t return to Nottingham

MY partner and myself have just been for our first ever stay in Nottingham, even though we are pensioners and live only in the next county.

We were delighted with the city. Our hotel was fine, as were our visits to Nottingham Contemporary, the Castle Museum and Art Gallery, the Galleries of Justice (what a superb lady guide!) and the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre (where we spent £230 we could not afford, but did so happily as the merchandise was so well displayed in a multitude of shops).

But everything was spoilt at the last going-off, by an officious twerp in the bus station at that shopping centre.

He told us that I could not take a souvenir picture of my partner in the bus station, as it was “private property”.

I told him that I had lost two uncles in the war, fighting Hitler. And now we were breeding little Hitlers like this idiot.

He managed to sour the taste of a great two days in Nottingham. We will not return to be insulted by such people.

We will spend our money in Cambridge instead.

And there, pensioners have free parking and free bus travel from the Park and Ride.

We were astonished to see that the trams in Nottingham do not respect the national over 60s free bus pass.

So that is a second reason why we won’t return.

Carry on scoring own goals Nottingham, and you will get no tourists spending in your shops.

VIN ADAMSWOOD, Woodrow Park, Scartho, Grimsby

The superb lady guide! at the Galleries of Justice is the only one to emerge from all of this with any credit whatsoever.

Presumably Vin travels to various towns and cities and immediately submits equally no-holds-barred analyses of their relative credentials to the local newspapers upon getting back home. Cambridge had better be on its best behaviour.

I’m not sure Nottingham can continue. Not after this.