22/08/15 - Bournville Boulevard

Distance - 6 Miles
Geocaches - 6
Walk Inspiration - Discovery Walks in Birmingham - Walk 3


Sonia is working in Birmingham, which means that I spy an opportunity to provide moral support and accompany her on the arduous train trip from Kidderminster.  Wanting to have a lift home following a proper drink is just a rumour circulated by today's wage slave.

Alight at Snow Hill Station.  The proper start of the walk is Gas Street Basin, so I have the chance to walk through Birmingham's financial district, saying hello to old friends (The Old Joint Stock, the Wellington) before taking a couple of photos of the City Centre landmarks.

Floozie.  Jacuzzi.  Town Hall

War Memorial.  Library

Hard to tell which image in the above photo is the most sombre.  War Memorials always deserve respect and can make you a touch mournful, but what can you make of the white elephant that is the library.  Opened with great Civic Pride following £189m investment in 2013, we have to put up with the country's guffaws that met the news that they cannot afford to staff it, opening for just 6 hours on weekends.

And it gets worse.  A couple of months ago they put out an appeal for the public to donate books.

Still, it looks pretty.

In trying to match Hollywood, Broad Street offers a version of the "Walk of Stars", with our famous honoured in the pavements.  I gave up looking when I reached Nigel Mansell.

The canal is reached at Gas Street Basin - and I head off in a direction never attempted before - South - Towards Worcester - following in the footsteps of Julia Bradbury.

Regency Wharf offers a Design for Life

Worcester Birmingham Canal

It's just that I had forgotten something in my planning.  I really don't like canal walks.

I can put up with the monotony and the micro caches but it's those sanctimonious idiots on bikes that insist on dinging their bells at you really get my goat.  It's a small wonder a lycra clad speeding idiot didn't end up capturing an unexpected morning dunk on his Go-Pro.

When you are putting a picture of a tunnel on a blog, you know there has been little of interest.

Did have to Squeeze past two lady ramblers on the narrow path

See little of Edgbaston but the vista momentarily improves as I reach the University of Birmingham and a gap in the trees offers a glimpse of the Chamberlain Tower.

Impressive clock tower based on Siena's campanile, it did offer a Tuscan flavour to the walk.

Palazzo Pubblico, Brummie Style

The end of the canal walking comes at Bournville Station.  Strangely, I've never been here before.  This has nothing to do with it being a Quaker Town, where the altruistic Cadbury family invested in beautiful living spaces for their employees but no pubs.

Factory Glimpse

Bournville is very pretty for inner city suburbia.  I like the way the houses along Mary Vale road all had alphabetical names of towns as well as house numbers.  Although you would have to question how the planners managed to put "Knowle", alongside "Odessa" and consider yourself a little unlucky if you got "Dresden".

Get to see the front of the Cadbury Factory and then make my way across a couple of parks, where I pick up a bus on the Bristol Road.

As expected, no pubs encountered, so I tell the driver of the 61 to take me to Digbeth and don't spare the horses.

A tale deserving of its own blog.