The tour starts from the main courtyard where you can get a fine view over the and proceeds to the scale model of the castle in the museum as the guide details the development of the settlement and the castle right up to the present day, before finally descending a steep set of stairs. The first of the chambers visited is directly below the palace and has been used in the past as a dungeon and as a slaughterhouse and meat store. This is however just a foretaste of what is to come and then tour quickly emerges from this subterranean world into the rear courtyard where the palace’s coach entrance and stables can be viewed. Next, the tour leads back to the upper bailey along the fabulous eastern façade where the guide pauses to point out some of the interesting details and give a brief history of the palace, its destruction and rebirth.

Finally, you reach the highlight of the tour as the group enters Mortimer’s Hole itself. This 321 foot long service passage was dug as a shortcut for good delivered from the town below. The tunnel takes its name from Roger Mortimer who took up residency in the castle along with his lover Queen Isabella following their French backed invasion of England in 1326 that resulted in the death of Isabella’s husband Edward II and the usurpation of their teenage son Edward III. Each night the security conscious Isabella would supervise the locking of the castle gates and take the only set of keys to her chamber until the morning. This continued until one night in 1330 when a disaffected guard supplied Edward and his followers with a key to the service tunnel, whereupon they crept into the castle, dragged Mortimer off to be executed and reclaimed the crown.

It is not known whether this is the actual tunnel that they used but it has some interesting features of its own, including a chamber that was originally used as a pigeon loft where the roosting niches are still visible. During the civil war, the roof of the chamber was removed, two cannons were installed and the niches were used for storing cannon balls. The tour emerges in Brewhouse Yard at the foot of the ridge from where it is a short walk passed the famous Robin Hood statue to the gatehouse where the tour ends in a small room used by the current Sheriff of Nottingham for ceremonial purposes.

The tour provides a wonderful overview of the history of the castle and a chance to see some of the areas not normally open to the public, but the narrow passageways and steep steps that can be quite slippery may not be to everyone’s tastes.