17/06/26 - Rail Trail - Langley Green to Smethwick Galton Bridge

Back to my roots

A combination of sources for today's walk, which is possibly the most personal one undertaken.

This month's History West Midlands Podcast is about racism in 1960s Smethwick and specifically Malcolm X's 1965 visit to the area. The next leg of my "rail trails" series is between Langley Green and Smethwick.

Peter Griffiths became Smethwick’s Conservative MP in the 1964 general election after running a notoriously racist and anti-immigration campaign, winning against the national trend and displacing Labour’s Patrick Gordon Walker. A few months later, on 12 February 1965, Malcolm X visited Smethwick at the invitation of Avtar Singh Jouhl and the Indian Workers’ Association to see the discrimination faced by Black and Asian residents, including the colour bar at the Blue Gates pub, where he was not served. He described the situation in Smethwick as even worse than America, and his visit became a powerful symbol of international solidarity against racism. Malcolm X was assassinated in New York on 21 February 1965, just nine days after the Smethwick visit.

I was born in Birmingham and spent the first two years in Smethwick. In a street very near and similar to where Malcolm X visited. My parents - white, working class, moved away in 1971. I never heard them be racist but their reasons were "they didn't want their kids to be in the minority at school".

With this as a backdrop - I trace a route between the two stations, taking in key locations to the story and from my life. It's an urban walk - so certainly not pretty.

Mappiman's First House - Remembered only through photos

There's not that many pubs in the area. The first seen, the Merrivale - a burnt-out shell that is bound to be demolished soon. Most in the area are "Desi-Pubs" - a perfect blend of beer and Indian Food, mixed grill platters a speciality. The Old Chapel is a surviving traditional pub and also the oldest non-secular building in Smethwick. Long been of interest, as we drive past it from the Albion. My mom tells me stories of sharing half a cider with my dad, unable to afford a drink each, having mortgaged themselves to the hilt to purchase the two-up, two-down.

I was hoping to visit today, but it appears to be going through a change of ownership. Stonegate has it up for sale and Facebook has an enthusiastic post suggesting a new chapter is starting soon. 

Old Chapel - I can claim a tick from my pram in 1970

Blue Plaque

Lunch and an interlude at Smethwick Heritage Centre in Victoria Park. A tiny room celebrating Smethwick's industrial past and West Bromwich Albion's former glories.

Picnic in a Park

The Red Cow - Peter Griffiths, the Racist MP, used to campaign from there. Now Desi

The Blue Gates - Visited on my Metro Pub Crawl Walk

My acting career died a death before it had chance to flourish. In Smethwick High Street - where I was busy photographing the mosque, I was approached by a film producer who needed white Caucasian males to appear as extras in a movie being shot. Photos taken and paperwork part completed until I asked how long I would be needed for. Alas, shooting was between 2pm and 8pm. I couldn't commit.

A statue to Sikh Soldiers in WW1

Marshall Street - not far from Smethwick Galton Bridge - is the logical conclusion to the day's activities. A blue plaque marking Malcolm X's visit to Smethwick.

A street of terraced houses

Malcolm was here

Walk Details

Distance - 5 miles

Geocaches - 2

Previous Stages on the Wyre Valley Line - Worcester to Droitwich, Droitwich to Hartlebury, Hartlebury to Kidderminster, Kidderminster to Hagley, Hagley to Stourbridge, Stourbridge to Cradley Heath, Cradley Heath to Old Hill, Old Hill to Langley Green

15/06/26 - A Bristol Ring - Stage 1

Go Jauntly

A new trail, a new app. I noticed another one of those "circular walks around a city" routes - this time, Bristol. 6 Walks, 33 miles - relatively cheap trains from Worcester. It's achievable.

The only place to get the routes is through an app called Go Jauntly. It all works perfectly - stage-by-stage instructions, real time progress on an open-source map.

Stage 1 is a decent enough ramble and it also brings the Bristol and Bath Railway Walk to my attention. A green corridor along the former 15-mile railway line, cutting straight through the City in a north-east direction. A little built up near Temple Meads - and it does run through a caravan shanty town - presumably forcibly removed from Clifton Downs, after pearl clutching segments on slow news days.

It's busy - and as expected, populated by walkers and dicks on all sorts of wheeled devices - all ignoring the "please share", "go slow and "keep left" signposts. I am two years into my retirement and cannot help but consider my own mortality. I never expected it to come from a dreadlocked hippy travelling 20 mph on a rickety bike with cow-horn handlebars.

Hiding from the city on the Bristol/Bath Walkway

Keep Bristol Weird

The route picks out green corridors when it can - before crossing rugby pitches and Chester Park, then continuing through the urban stretches of Two Mile Hill and Magpie Bottom. Our goal, the Avon Walkway - a gentle riverside stretch that provides the highlight of the day.

Messing about on the River Avon

Troopers Hill is the end of the walk - the chimney of the former copper smelting works, an unofficial symbol of East Bristol.

Troopers Hill Heathland

An encouraging start - that maybe took hiding from the city a little too seriously. 7 miles and not a single pub passed.

Hoping for better news from Stage 2.

Walk Details

Distance - 8.25 miles

Geocaches - 5

Walk Inspiration - A Bristol Ring, Stage 1

12/06/26 - On the Trail of..... Penda's Fen

Play for Today

Always on the lookout for new walking inspiration, I was intrigued when The Dispatch newspaper drew my attention to Penda's Fen. Alan Clarke's 1974 Play for Today—the same director who later made Scum and The Firm—is remarkable for more than just its storyline. In less than ninety minutes it tackles Christianity and paganism, sexuality, nuclear annihilation, working-class identity and the nature of England itself. The hyperlink provides a summary of the plot and its ongoing impact quite nicely.

More extraordinary still, it was broadcast on BBC1 at 9.30pm. At a time when there were only three television channels, the British public effectively had a choice: watch Penda's Fen or go to bed early.

Penda was the seventh-century Mercian ruler remembered as England's last great pagan king. The drama is set in Pinvin, near Pershore - a village whose name in Old English is Penda's Fen - although filming took place in Chaceley, across the River Severn from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.

The only walk I have in the area is from an old Country Walking Magazine. This, and some internet-based sleuthing to determine filming locations and a day out for exercise, followed the previous day on the sofa watching the DVD.

I start in the nearby village of Forthampton. In the play, The Vicar visits a parishioner on his death-bed to perform the last rites. I have my first location - an external shot of an impressive house opposite the church.

The last rites were shunned - the dying man happy that he had lived his life on earth

Forthampton Church is "doors open" and I am distracted before taking a step.

Forthampton Church

A Saxon Devil's Head above the front door - Other treasures include a rare stone altar and medieval pews

I'm off and away. The play's eeriness matched by an unchanged for centuries agricultural landscape, with many ancient dead and dying oaks hosting roosting corvids, which take cacophonous flight as I disturb them on approach. I am aiming for the weir at Upper Lode, with constant views of Tewkesbury Abbey on the opposite side of the River Severn.

Dead oaks and Tewkesbury Abbey in the far distance

The weir at Upper Lode

A long stretch of riverside walking passing a couple of pubs. I am too early for the Lower Lode Hotel and Yew Tree Inn, which marks the return inland. A road leads to Chaceley, the site of many of the filming locations.

The main characters family home at the Old Vicarage

The home of the TV scriptwriter

Chaceley Church features prominently - the main protagonist plays the organ there and during his crisis of faith, has a vision when the floor cracks and a voice is heard imploring "free me". It's "doors open" - with a sign saying to close the door behind otherwise birds will get in. There are already three ravens inside.

Chaceley Church

Church Organ

Another devil's head - in the keystone of the arch

Green lanes take me back to Forthhampton. I've been too early for the pubs found on route and nothing is to be found here. A remote good beer guide tick is available at the Railway Inn, Ripple. A 15-minute drive away.

Walk Details

Distance - 8 miles

Geocaches - 0

Walk Inspiration - The Dispatch Newspaper and Country Walking Magazine, January 1995 Walk 12

10/06/26 - Madresfield Court

Brideshead Visited

Convoluted inspiration for today's trip. A 2 mile jaunt across the plains below the Malvern Hills can hardly be described as a walk. 

Today's Walking

The inspiration? I thought the Pevsner Guide to Worcestershire would help with my understanding of the county. As Jonathan Meades stated in an associated BBC documentary - Pevsner is really just a book of lists.  

Madresfield Court piqued my interest. I have walked on the footpaths surrounding it many times but never visited. The documentary told me the house, and the family, was the inspiration for the Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited. I've unsuccessfully read Waugh before but gave the 1980s TV show and the 2008 film a watch. 10 hours vs. 2 hours but both entertaining enough.

Madresfield Court

The house is in private ownership - and has been for centuries - but they do have open days in the summer. £17 invested and a further £6 in takeaway cake. I am signed up for my latest early-retirement attempt at entertainment. Visiting Stately Homes.

Who would have predicted it?

It's a 90 minute tour of a house packed to the rafters with better quality tat than I have amassed over the years. They have gorilla skeletons, skinned tigers and tortoiseshell sideboards. I have the world's finest collection of walking books and Windows 6.1 Mobile phones. 

Of all the rooms, it is the chapel that is most impressive. Access via the library (smelled wonderful), it is quite the spectacle of art and god's glory.

We can compare Waugh's description, delivered as Charles Ryder is shown around by the dipsomaniac, doomed homosexual, teddy-bear-carrying Sebastian Flyte, with Pevsner's characteristically matter-of-fact inventory;

One of these was the chapel. We entered it by the public porch (another door led direct to the house); Sebastian dipped his fingers in the water stoup, crossed himself, and genuflected; I copied him. ‘Why do you do that?’ he asked crossly.

‘Just good manners.’

‘Well, you needn’t on my account. You wanted to do sightseeing; how about this?’

The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished and redecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Angels in printed cotton smocks, rambler-roses, flower-spangled meadows, frisking lambs, texts in Celtic script, saints in armour, covered the walls in an intricate pattern of clear, bright colours. There was a triptych of pale oak, carved so as to give it the peculiar property of seeming to have been moulded in Plasticine. The sanctuary lamp and all the metal furniture were of bronze, hand-beaten to the patina of a pock-marked skin; the altar steps had a carpet of grass-green, strewn with white and gold daisies.

‘Golly,’ I said.

Pevsner;

"An exceptionally complete piece of Arts and Crafts decoration of 1902.

The paintings are by A. Payne. The stained glass is by him and others. The triptych is by Charles Gere. The small crucifix and the candlesticks are by A. J. Gaskin... C. R. Ashbee's guild also did woodwork."

Sebastian was based on Hugo Lygon, represented as a child in the chapel. All that money and opportunity and he died at 36, falling off a kerb in Germany. The Lygons seem fully aware of the chance that fate plays in life. There is a huge portrait of the distant commoner from the Black Country, William Jennens. He died in his nineties, with a will that left all his money to his mother. The Lygons, after a court trial recorded by Charles Dickens, were the recipients of a third of his money due one married-in family member being a distant cousin. £800m in today's money.

Hugo, pulling the heads off flowers.

Since retirement, I have been posting a daily tweet of what I have enjoyed that day. Day 712 announced my upcoming visit and the watching of the film. 

I think my followers want me to get back to documenting the rough pubs of Cannock.

pic.twitter.com/b63rxdXTuN

— Cooking Lager is feeling divisive (@CarpeZytha) June 9, 2026