Traffic in Nottingham is usually pretty good – transport is one Council responsibility that works really well in the City.

But this morning, something was afoot, and the Mansfield Road, which is the arterial road from my house to the city centre, was jam packed at 9.30.  It’s usually pretty hairy from about 8am to 9am, but calms down rapidly after 9am.  So for committee meetings at 10am, I can be pretty certain that leaving the house at 9.25am will let me catch a bus and get to the city centre in plenty of time.

Not this morning. As soon as I got onto the Mansfield Road, I could see there was a problem – traffic in the inbound direction was at a standstill throughout the Sherwood shops.  There were three buses at the stop unable to move because there was nowhere to go.  I could see as far as the brow of the first hill, so I thought I’d walk as far as that to see if I could see what the problem was.

Once I got there, there was no end in sight to the traffic queue, and I was already much ahead of the bus I would have been sitting on, so I decided to carry on on foot into town.

It’s not nearly as far as I thought it was!  I have just checked on Google Maps, and door to door, it’s just over two miles. I thought it was closer to three.  In fact it only takes about thirty minutes to walk – about what the Government thinks everyone should walk every day.  The bus normally takes at least 15 minutes, and if you factor in the waiting time too, it might even be quicker to walk!

This morning, I squandered the health advantage of walking in with a McBreakfast, but in the future, I will be better.  Who knows, one day I might be thin!