Tag: Birmingham

March 4th – A much better day, when it felt spring had arrived. It was the day of the annual Erdington Cycle Jumble, so a chance to rummage some tat, bag a bargain, scoff bacon rolls and talk to old faces. Following, I rode the canals of Birmingham, down through Brookvale, Witton Lakes, Aston, up over the Hockley Flyover to Soho for lunch, back along the canal to Small Heath, then via the Cole Valley and Plants Brook back to Sutton Park and home. 

I was particularly intrigued by the wonderful Jonathan Meades immortalised in stencil underneath Spaghetti Junction.

It was a great ride with periods of lovely sunshine, spring flowers and only one heavy downpour.

And the cats, particularly the monocular marmalade munchkin in Erdington, were great, as ever.

A restorative and lovely ride.

February 25th – An unusual Saturday morning that saw me at work in Darlaston, and the commute there had been very hard, as it had been solidly against the wind. I left around lunchtime for a run into Birmingham on the canal, hoping to stop off for some Caribbean food at my favourite cafe on the way through.The plan was to have the wind behind me back up the canal through Hamstead.

The cafe was rammed, so I got back on the canal, and went to the Soho Road, where it has to be said, excellent curry and breads were devoured; but whilst eating, the rains came and winds got up, much against the forecast.

Whilst on the Soho Loop I spotted this curious, brutalist sculpture in a really odd, forgotten spot by Asylum Bridge. It seems to have been revealed by scrub clearance work, and I have no idea what it is, or why it’s there. Does anyone out there know, please?

I don’t mind the rain and I’ll tolerate the wind, but the two together are evil. So I popped to see a mate in Aston and got the train back to Blake Street. 

A sort of lost day, really.

February 3rd – Out in Brum after completing a rush job, this made me smile – near St Philips cathedral, a hybrid electric car, a Mitsubishi Outlander – being charged at a public charging point. 

First time I’ve ever seen that and it filled me with optimism for the future. 

Nice car, too.

January 10th – Sadly, my commuting life right now isn’t terribly varied. I’m seeing a lot of dark urbanity, stations, later and earlier. Apologies. Finding variance in a busy January when you don’t see much daylight is always hard.

Passing through Birmingham New Streetin the evening, I found myself at the same platform as the steel horse sculpture that forms the first in a chain of 12 along the line side to Wolverhampton. 

Erected in 1987 and designed by Kevin Atherton, the Iron Horse project put similar horses in different motion positions alongside an urban railway line, to appear as if the train you were on was losing a race with a horse. Some jump, some buck, canter or trot. They are warm, lifelike, and softly amusing.

They have fared well and not dated, and are one of the great curiosities of Birmingham and the Black Country.

December 28th – It was one of those so cold, but so beautiful sunlight winter days when there was thin ice on the canal and the usual winter towpath quagmire had frozen solid, so I headed to Birmingham on the canal. From Aldridge, via Rushall Junction, Tower Hill, Aston and Brindley Place. After a call at the German Market I went up to Soho, over Sandwell Valley Park and home on NCN 5 via Yewtree and Walsall.

The kingfisher was the best that could be done – the birds are very active at the moment, but they don’t stay still for long! In the sunset photo, that’s St Augustine’s at Edgbaston, as viewed from the canal mainline at Rotton Park. the sky really was that colour.

A beautiful day, and a lovely ride.

November 9th – Passing through New Street on a drizzly, cold November evening, I caught the lights and signals of New Street mingling with the city skyline, centre stage the brilliant Brutalist gem, Alpha Tower.

One of the joys of winter is seeing this view, the signals, the reassurance of light, warmth, machinery safely in control and life above going on as normal.

Birmingham is glorious in it’s beauty sometimes.

October 21st – A free afternoon in Birmingham was fun, rooting around the markets for fruit, veg, shellfish and other treats. On the fruit market itself, one stallholder only selling melons stored his rather lovely Orbea road bike in an innovative way I had to admire.

Also admiring was the young musician, guitar case in hand, photographing the wonderful Bowie artwork by Anna Tomix near the Smallbrook Queensway bridge. I think David Jones would approve of that imagery.

An afternoon in Brum is never wasted. And the shellfish was superb.

September 30th – The rest of Birmingham, from Snow Hill to Soho, from Victoria Square to the Bull Ring, was carrying on regardless, as it tends to do – the architecture as ever was a joy, as were the crowded streets and very changeable weather. 

Birmingham has progressed massively in my lifetime. But I still adore it. It’s a wonderful place. 

Birmingham – please never stop changing.

September 30th – Right now, Birmingham is doing what it does best – changing. I was in Birmingham for a sunny, pleasant afternoon that felt like the last of summer, and I continued my fascination with the demolition of the library, 103 Colmore Row and the Birmingham Conservatoire. The Adrian Boult Hall is now gone, the library down to it’s last scraps, and 103 Colmore Row is forlorn and truncated, much like the memory of the architect who designed all of them, the great John Madin.

There’s no time for sentiment, because Brum so doesn’t do that; the engineers are driving forward the change in their machines, cutting, smashing and pulverising the modernism to dust. And it’s fascinating, from the jurassic appearance of a resting concrete cutter to the antics of a pair of experts in a cradle slung above the devastation like some hi-visibility acetylene and helmet circus act.

It’s stunning, shocking and wonderful to watch. But I’m glad Madin himself didn’t live to see the crushing of his big civil dream.