Worcester and Birmingham Canal - Day One - 13 February 2024
Background
Why? Well, to be blunt, I like to have breaks booked nice and early, so there's something to look forward to ahead of the long dark winter. I get restless and irritable otherwise (difficult to believe, I know!). As Christmas passes (before preferably) it's time to think about travel plans for the forthcoming year; but this time Cate just won't be drawn on anything - a few destinations (Costa Rica, New England in the Fall, Turkmenistan, Camino Portuguese) get mentioned, but Mrs N won't be drawn!
A solo trip to Germany for football, and a similar "boys trip" are booked in; but that's not enough. What are "we going to do?" the debate rumbles on, and then suddenly out of nowhere "doing one of the Julia Bradbury canal or railway walks" gets mentioned....... Out comes the DVD (yes we still have a DVD player, and CD players!) of the canal walks, and it's the 30 mile walk along the Worcester and Birmingham Canal that we're drawn to. How and why we ended up planning the walk for mid February, heaven knows? I can only surmise that my impatience to get on and do something asap led us to that! Surprising really, as I'm renowned for my patience!
Over the week leading up to departure, we study the forecasts for Birmingham, Bromsgrove and Worcester daily - sometimes twice a day. With 2 days to go it looks as follows:-
- Day 1 - dry, but with possible showers in the afternoon. Cold in the morning
- Day 2 - variable - with showers potentially all day
- Day 3 - dire - heavy rain, but warmer!
Day One - Birmingham to Hopwood
We leave Wycombe station on a clear cold morning, and 90 minutes later we pull into Birmingham Moor Street with the weather grey and drizzly. Either way, Moor Street Station remains a resplendent testament to the golden era of train travel. One shade of brown with white lettering on the signs. It really is an unsung jewel in a city that is, to put it mildly, not that easy on the eye. Given the drizzle, we seek a taxi to our starting point at Tindall Bridge. A grumpy taxi driver reluctantly agrees to take us there, but only after I've explained exactly where it is. "We'll have to go all the way round" the miserable old scrot exhorts. Well I wasn't expecting you to drive through the Bull Ring and New Street Shopping Centres you dopey old xxxx!
Ten pounds lighter, we are deposited by Tindall Bridge. The weather is lovely - that is, of course, if you are a duck! On the DVD, Julia starts her walk in pouring rain in the centre of Brum, so maybe I should have foreseen what might happen to us. What's good for jolly old Julia will do for us too. Note to self - don't follow the BBC weather forecast religiously!
And so we begin. The drizzle is actually ok - not enough to soak us. This continues for the first two hours, and it's not penetrating our wet weather gear. We initially descend onto the Birmingham Old Canal, and quickly arrive at Old Turn Junction, which actually has a canal boat roundabout. In the middle of the roundabout there is is a sign indicating canals to such gems as Fazeley, Wolverhampton and Worcester. Birmingham is, of course, known as the Venice of Britain due to it's large number of canals; nevertheless those 3 places hardly conjure up the same visions as Murano, San Giorgio Maggiore and Dorsoduro!
The area around Gas Street Basin (what a great name!) has been modernised significantly, and is now home to numerous bars and eateries - even on a damp old day it has a certain charm. We pass under Black Sabbath Bridge, named in honour of the City's finest purveyors of Heavy Metal (and it has spawned quite a few fine different purveyors, I might add). It must be something about the place that lends itself to doom-laden classis such as War Pigs, Paranoid, Iron Man and Fairies Wear Boots. Anyway, no sign of Sir Ozzy or Tony Iommi, so on we plod, into the void. At the end of Gas Street Basin we find the beginning (or end) of the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Its confluence with the River Severn is a mere 30 miles, 88 Bridges and 58 locks away to the south-west.
It's not long before we leave the "glitz(!)" of Birmingham city centre behind. Soon we start to run alongside the mainline railway that heads down to the south-west. The scenery is not as "grim industrial" as I'd expected. Yes, there are many walls covered in unattractive graffiti, but the canal is largely a green corridor through the city. We pass Edgbaston (where the people who are "considerably richer than yow" live), and come to the University of Birmingham, which for large parts of the year becomes the 4th largest town of Buckinghamshire residents! Its clock tower is oddly magnificent, towering above the place - At 100m high, "Old Joe" is the world's tallest free-standing clock tower.
Onwards past Selly Oak, far more akin to the "grim Brum" that I was expecting, and onto our stop for lunch. The place we'd identified was right next to one of the bridges over the canal, but we hadn't bargained on there being no access up onto said Bridge 30 feet above us. Bugger! Oh well, there's a greasy spoon about 40 minutes walk away, just off the canal at Lifford (assuming we can get up onto the bridge!)
Ten minutes later the drizzle turns to a full on downpour. We get to the see the famous old chocolate factory at Bournville - unlike Julia, we didn't get to even smell the chocolate/cocoa wafting across from the factory. At Bournville Station, we shelter for 5 minutes and put on more layers to keep out the rain. I, once again, have to go for my ultra-sexy head-turning orange poncho - it's first appearance since the Camino de Santiago. We have no choice, we need to push on to Nadie Bacon's Café at Lifford. Twenty minutes later we get to Lifford, and it's a big relief to see that we can actually get up onto the bridge, and to the café.
The food at Nadie's was perfect, and the cups of tea like nectar. I had a little chat with Nadie (well I think it was her!) when I asked if they'd got a loo. To be honest, I couldn't really understand a lot of what she said - it was that sing-song squeaking strong Brummie accent - something about a family member being taken unwell on a holiday in Turkey. I, nevertheless, managed to establish that she'd unlock the back door, and we could pop round the side of the café to use the loo at the back. As I scurried around the side of the café, there on the wall was the man himself. Brum's finest purveyor of metal - Sir Ozzy himself, and with UB40's Ali Campbell next to him. Yep an odd combination musically, but both cherished son's of the second city. Thank heavens for my weak bladder; otherwise I'd have never seen the marvellous mural. Photo's had to be taken!
Those who know me, will be aware that I do like rock music a lot. I've seen Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne a couple of times, but I'll be honest enough to say that whilst I like them; they are not nearly my favourite rock artists. It'll always be Thin Lizzy, UFO and the old (Bon Scott era) AC/DC for me. However, Ozzy; or Sir Ozzy as a I like to call him, is the Godfather of British Rock, with a presence and reputation larger than his musical achievements. All hail the nutter!
The rain slowed a little, so we needed to push on for the final 4.5 miles to our hotel. No sooner had we got back on the towpath the rain increased in intensity. Scheiss! We had two more miles to walk along the canal before the Wast Hill Tunnel, where we had to go and over the top of the hill. At least along the canal there was a small semblance of cover from trees, walls etc. Soon we passed the junction with the Stratford canal, and then started the climb up onto Wast Hill. Away from the canal, the footpaths were absolutely sodden - that was as good as they got. In places we had no choice but to walk through deep puddles, soaking our feet/boots/trousers in the process. Seriously, what were we thinking of - doing a walk of this time in February?
Entrance to Wast Hill Tunnel
Just under two very wet miles later we descended back down to the canal. The water in the canal was now brown as a result of all the water running off the embankments down into it. For a while a family on a narrow boat day trip sailed alongside us. The kids sounded like they were having a great time, and the mother who was steering the boat looked a darn sight drier than us. She had no cover, so how she achieved that, I've no idea. We got to the bridge where we needed to exit the canal to head to our hotel, and yet again there was no path up the embankment and onto it. Muttley-esque expletive laden mutterings were followed by the obvious decision - plough on to next one. Luckily we managed to get away from the canal there, and onwards up the main road to the hotel. On the positive side, it meant a little less to walk tomorrow; and frankly we couldn't really get much more soaked.
Outside the hotel (which was somewhat reminiscent of Crossroads) we stripped off some of our outer layers in a fruitless attempt to look less like vagrants. We entered still looking utterly bedraggled, and with steam coming off us. Luckily, the receptionist was a friendly woman with a cheerful Brummie accent. She didn't bat an eyelid. We were in!
With one dry set of clothes to change into for the evening, we now had the serious challenge of trying to dry as much of our walking gear as possible for tomorrow. How I didn't burn out the motor on their hairdryer I don't know. But the marvellous piece of kit did enough to get the priority items, particularly our boots, dry enough for us to go to sleep knowing that we should be ok for the morning.
With no significant change in the forecast, we both went to bed optimistic that we'd be able to get through day two; but with serious concerns that we may have to abandon the final push into Worcester on day three. We weren't prepared to get as soaked again. In any case, we could come over another time to finish off the walk, and stay over in the City.
We slept like the proverbial logs.
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