Teversal

Dave above the coalfield

On the summit of Silverhill Woods, the highest point in Nottinghamshire, stands a bronze miner holding a Davy lamp. Locals call him Dave. He faces out over the villages that used to mine the coal beneath him, and on a clear day you can see as far as Lincoln Cathedral.

The hill he stands on used to be a spoil heap for Silverhill Colliery. It has been reclaimed, grassed over and planted, and now forms one end of the Teversal Trails — five miles of flat, tree-lined paths laid along the old colliery railway lines, open to walkers, cyclists and horse riders. The line to Silverhill Colliery closed in 1978. The trails link Teversal to Skegby, Stanton Hill, Pleasley and Sutton-in-Ashfield, and connect onward to the Phoenix Greenways and the Five Pits Trail.

Trailhead and table

The Trails Visitors Centre has free parking, a café, a picnic area, toilets and a Coal Garden of old pit wheels and colliery ironwork marking the entrance. There's a secure dog field for hire next door, and the football, cricket and bowls clubs share the grounds and car park.

The Carnarvon, on Fackley Road, runs to more than seventy main courses — Spicy White Crab Cakes and Loaded Potato Skins with Pulled Pork to start, Greek Chicken in a creamy garlic, tomato and onion sauce, burgers built up with grilled chilli halloumi and cream cheese jalapeños. One blogger singled out the green beans for "managing to retain a lovely crunch." The garden has heaters for the colder months, and enough dogs passing through that reviewers mention it specifically.

Lawrence, the earls and St Katherine's

It used to be the Cross Keys, renamed the Carnarvon Arms around 1870 after the family who owned Teversal Manor. Its Ship Room has a local reputation for being where D.H. Lawrence wrote parts of Lady Chatterley's Lover; the novel's fictional mining village, Tevershall, borrows its name and its coal country from the real thing.

St Katherine's Church, Grade I listed, kept its 17th-century interior intact when most English churches were re-fitted by the Victorians. The box pews are original, dating to around 1637 when £100 was spent standardising the seating. The Molyneux family's pew sits under a canopy on four barley-twist columns, with a separate pew behind it for their servants. Pevsner called it "one of the most rewarding village churches in the county" for the completeness of its furnishings — the two-decker oak pulpit, the Norman font, seven hatchments bearing the Molyneux arms. The third bell dates to 1551, one of the oldest in the county. The Molyneux family held the manor for around 150 years before it passed to the Earls of Carnarvon, whose 5th Earl financed Howard Carter's 1922 excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Connections beyond Teversal

Sutton Parkway station, on the Robin Hood Line, is about four miles off; the A38 and B6027 bring you in by road, with the M1 at Junction 28 not far beyond, and the 417 bus stops on Carnarvon Street. Hardwick Hall and Stainsby Mill are a short drive via the Pleasley trail corridor.

The room that stayed open

Back in the village, the Manor Room — once a coach house, later a school, left to Teversal in 1929 by the Countess of Carnarvon — now hosts a breakfast club, a yoga class and an art group, and can be booked out for about £12 an hour. It closed as a school in 2001. It didn't stay closed for long.