Tag: galton Bridge

March 12th – Since I’d had to miss the bike jumble last week, and spring always starts with a ride into Birmingham on the canals and cycleways, I took a gentle ride into the city via Sutton Park and the Witton Lakes cycleway, returning via NCN 5 through the Galton and Sandwell Valleys. 

It was warm, still and the journey was as full of surprise and delight as ever it is. Everything form the ladybirds to the urban cats is awakening, and I see Bill Drummond is still communicating with Birmingham via the patch of light under Spaghetti Junction.

A good start to spring.

March 14th – I headed back home from Birmingham through Smethwick, West Bromwich and the Sandwell Valley. The sun was dying and it was starting to get overcast when I got to Rushall Junction, but the scenery on the way was beautiful. 

Galton Bridge still fascinates – I wonder how many folk stand on that station platform, not knowing they’re on a seemingly precarious shelf bolted on the the side of a viaduct?

The back-street architecture of the Black Country remains gorgeous, and the little-appreciated green jewel of the Sandwell Valley was beautiful. I loved to see the cormorants lallygagging on the rail in the lake, without any concern for their audience.

The flotsam wrapped around the fence next to the Tame at Ray Hall was a reminder that the spring is fragile, and bad weather not so far away…

Birmingham and the Black Country dull? Be off with you…

May 13th – Not a great day. Over to Telford early, then back to Tyseley. Transport worked well, but I didn’t get much done. The journeys were perpetually under the threat of rain – which largely went unfulfilled, thankfully. But there was sun. And spring. In Telford, a row of ornamental cherry tress provided a cascade of blossom. The canal cutting from Galton Bridge station where I changed trains was an emerald delight. Cowslips were quietly rioting in yellow on the embankment of Clayhanger Bridge.

Industrial environments aren’t what they used to be. Thank goodness.

April 6th – I came out of Birmingham on cycle route 5, up the canal to Smethwick’s Galton Bridge, then up through the Sandwell Valley to Rushall Junction on the canal. Galton bridge is a historic, very high bridge over the mainline canal. Built in 1829 by Thomas Telford, it’s a classic of its kind and the views from it are fantastic. The canal here is lovely to cycle, and steeped in industrial history. Well worth a wander if you get chance. Travel writer and culvert crawler Nick Crane came this way in his book ‘Two Degrees West’ and pointed out that the arrangement of canals (2, side by side at different levels), Railways (2 different lines at different levels) and road bridges made the physical geography here so complex that he had to draw it out on paper. He’s right.