A Bimble down the Brum Mainline to Smethwick

I was on a quest to discover one of the wonders of the industrial world which I had heard was buried in the heart of Smethwick. Forgotten and a tad forlorn the Galton Bridge is an impressive portal into the once beating heart of the beast that was Brum.  In 1829 this was Thomas Telford's crowning achievement as it constituted the largest single span bridge in the world at 150 feet wide. It is an impressive height above the canal, at 71 feet, and is an imposing structure today for those who like to stand and stare and contemplate its majesty back in the day. Preserved as an ancient monument, a grade one listed building, it goes largely unnoticed these days but was once a wonder of the world. I looked forward to walking across it and looking down on Telford's ambitious canal which cut a swathe through the heartlands, establishing the city as the engine of the industrial revolution. 

 

After the higgledy piggeldy maze of canals in Birmingham city centre you are spat out onto Telford's mainline just beyond the great terminus of Gas Street basin. This is a revelation to one used to curly canals as it was the equivalent of the M1, wide and straight as a die for as far as the eye can see.  In the 1820's Thomas Telford saw the original Brindley canal as ' little better than a crooked ditch' and set about usurping his predecessor and establishing his legacy as King of the canal system. The new Birmingham mainline opened in 1829 and transformed water borne transport in the Midlands. It is still a shock to the wanderer's eye accustomed to winding through quiet backwaters. The scale of the project takes a leap of historical comprehension.

Once Brindley had engineered the Bridgwater canal he turned his attention to the growing town of Birmingham which was strategically placed at the heart of the country to become a logistical hub for the many spokes that ambitious entrepreneurs of the Georgian age foresaw. The initial route, completed in 1768, provided a link to the collieries of the Black Country, transporting coal to fire the foundries and factories. It was the catalyst that would allow a town of 30,000 to explode into the city of a thousand trades and to become the heart of the industrial revolution.

The width of the canal provides a marked change whichever direction you arrive from. After you bend around the imposing National Indoor Arena the canal straightens and there is a sense of leaving the claustrophobia of the city behind as the sky widens.  You can immediately understand the importance and the efficacy of the route which supplied pig iron, limestone, brick, slate and timber to the voracious city.

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Intriguing arms and loops lead off the mainline which would reward closer inspection if I did not have a date with Galton. A floating vehicle would be of use in this adventure into the lesser explored recesses of the Birmingham system. One intrepid explorer of TV and newspaper gardening tips fame, Alys Fowler,  has already been inspired to do so in a bright red blow up dinghy and has written a lovely book about her own journey of discovery. 

I came across the book as it had a beautifully illustrated cover which is the marketing tool of the publishers of the booming genre of nature writing. The common narrative is usually a tale of spiritual growth or recovery aligned to the healing power of nature.  'The Salt Path' by Raynor Winn and 'The Outrun' by Amy Liptrott are great examples of the genre. Sometimes the illustration is the best bit about the book with a lino cut image of a hawk or a badger drawing the buyers eye. The unwitting reader is then subjected to an endurance test as the misery deepens until the only option is to throw the good looking book in the cut to spare others. 

The Oozells Street Loop has been consumed by the gentrification of the city as new apartments make the most of the deliquescent aspect. These watery roundabouts were once vital termini in the developing city. They are also remnants of Brindley's canal which was constrained by contours.  Another detour is the Icknield Port loop which heads past the unfortunately but accurately named Rotton Park up to a large reservoir which slakes the thirst of the city. The area is in another hopeful throe of regeneration in this eternally optimistic city but this area has long been a least favoured ward despite its proximity to the leafy lure of Edgbaston.  The junction here also leads to Winson Green on the Soho loop around the contours of Brindley's old line.  The canal creates an island dominated by two places any Brummie wants to avoid, the City Hospital and Her Majesty's Pleasure Birmingham, which only gets 2.5 stars in online reviews, one of which reads, 'not for me!'  

The 22 miles of James Brindley's original canal from Birmingham to Wolverhampton opened for traffic in 1772 and was immediately successful beyond the Birmingham Canal Companies wildest dreams. It gave investors a monopoly on the waterways for the boom years and drove the rapid development of the city.  Brindley followed the contours of the land which required a series of locks and encountered issues with water supply. Solutions included steam pumping stations regulating water levels to keep the traffic flowing. 

 

 One of these has been restored in Smethwick and provides a fascinating glimpse into the past and the differing heights of the two canals as they run parallel to one another. Brindley's cut is quiet and meandering, largely left to its own devices with the odd ambling wanderer shaded by overhanging trees in a verdant world, while Telford's track powers along below, living in the fast lane. The famous Smethwick steam engine designed for the purpose by founding fathers of the city, Matthew Boulton and James Watt, is in the Thinktank which houses relics from Birmingham's Science Museum and is the oldest working steam engine in the world. It is with a sense of pride and wonder that Brummies, finding themselves in a far flung museums around the world find that familiar stamp 'Made in Birmingham'

 

 City commuters fly by on electric bikes drawn to the wide towpath and a shortcut into the city. A profusionist friend uses this route to bomb into City Hospital keenly aware of timing the commute to the correct bpm. 

 

Herons are a familiar sight on the mainline and lucky charms for those who use the route. This one is so tame he is the ubiquitous one who is developing a cult following online. 

The two canals deviate from one another at Smethwick Junction and Brindley takes the high road.   The litter of an industrial heritage abounds as the detritus of mighty works lies abandoned.

The Engine Arm is named after the first Boulton and Watt steam pumping engine and affords a glimpse into the industrial past as the buildings of Lime Wharf look quietly onto calmer reflections. Telford's aqueduct once topped up water to the canals from Edgbaston reservoir.  It provides a good vantage point above the two rival canals which join up once again underneath the M5 at Spon Lane junction.

I was looking for gold though and I was close.  After navigating the uninviting Galton tunnel, there it stood, or more appropriately there it hung, magnificent, suspended in animation, a time capsule delivering me back in time to Birmingham's glory years. 

A Bimble up and down and around and around the Curly Wyrley

The Wyrley and Essington Canal lives up to its name as the Curly Wyrley. There 'ay' a straight cut on it as it weaves its twisty way. It takes a circuitous route around North Birmingham toward the Black Country and I joined it above the locks on the Rushall Canal.  This is strictly the 'Daw End Branch' that was built to transport lime from an area that is now 'Park Lime Pits Country Park', for use in the iron industry.  All the branch canals link up and the canal system effectively used the minerals of Cannock Chase to feed the industry of the big city. The Curly Wyrley is too good a catch all name to ignore.

My short cut from Sutton Coldfield to Aldridge didn't quite work out as the path was blocked by another new estate in development. Carrying a  bike is never a good look and a bimbler doesn't admit to being lost.  I found a quarry that looked inviting. I never know whether they try and put swimmers off  as it would be a magnet for teenage daredevils or whether it is treacherous to dive into the icy blue waters of these hidden biospheres.  I was heading to Chasewater though where childhood memories of lost boys taught us all a salient lessons about summer swimming larks.

 I dropped the idea of a swim and swept through Aldridge, home of a thousand small businesses, family companies going back generations, that keep employment ticking over on and the locals enterprising. Everything you never thought you needed is made here in its own niche factory, ready to be delivered to the four corners of the UK. White van man is from here and proud of it. 

The warehouses and factories back on to an idyllic stretch of canal. I hopped on at the hopefully named Aldridge Marina. For those who plumb these hidden stretches there is much to admire and plenty of solitude. Fishermen talked of the clarity of the water making it easy to spot the monsters of the deep as few boats had  passed of late.  A huge carp floated, bloated as the men debated the ethics of their sport. Amateurs had caused the passing of this famed monster, hauled out for a selfie once too often.

The canal gently wends its way through the back gardens and by ways of Walsall Wood with a towpath ideal for the bike. It is quiet now but in its heyday, heavy horses pulled barges full of coal toward industry. The canal linked the many collieries of South Staffordshire with the fierce fires of foundries and furnaces in the emerging cities. 

Walsall Wood and Brownhills are adorned with rusting metal sculptures celebrating the rich coal seams and the 'motorways' of Britain. The pits have gone but the memories linger and the legacy is this incredible stretch of curly canal. The guardian fisher fellow has lost his fish a few times and once had a wellington boot attached to his rod.

 The water lilies created an impressionist vision of a Brownhills Monet. The reality is less prosaic as Clayhanger Common lies above 20 feet of rubbish accumulated in a massive post war landfill. Along with the waste of the coal industry the area has been brutalised for years but the canal is a testament to renewal.

Brownhills is a town that has suffered its share of changing fortunes and the canal has been the focus of regeneration. This is where I used to come on Saturday mornings to buy knock off Lacoste jumpers with odd shaped crocodiles. From this angle the site of the busy market, where the best bargains in the Midlands could be found, looks transformed. 

 At Catshill Junction you have a decision to make. You can continue along the Curly Wyrley but a detour is worth exploring. 

Brownhills used to have some of the roughest pubs I have ever been in. Luckily I was with a rugby team from the local asylum and protected as a useful 16 year old butt of pranks long past their sell by date.  I remember people strewn about, mostly asleep, and an eating contest involving a pint glass.  The Anchor Pub looks better these days.

A noble, cast iron bridge at Ogley Junction is the point where this canal once connected with the Coventry Canal on the other side of Lichfield. An industrious group are trying to resurrecct this canal that last saw a barge in 1954 and has mostly sunken beneath private land.  The enterprise of the Hatherton and Lichfield canal volunteers is valiant and their excavations and exploits around Lichfield are well worth exploring. As children in the area, this was lost to us but the landscape is slowly being unearthed as history reveals itself once more.   

The sandy towpath of the Anglesey Branch delivers you to Chasewater and the voices from the back gardens tell you that this is the Black Country where ay is no and are is yes.  This is coal mining country and the legacy of deep and open cast mining is everywhere. Coal chutes line the canal and subsidence has taken its toll, such as closing the Cannock Extension to the huge mines that run for miles under Cannock Chase. Stories of kids disappearing down whirlpools into mines in Chasewater were legion in school and put us off swimming.  Cracks in the walls of homes attest to the deep scars in the landscape and what used to lie below.   The coal board paid half the cost of some houses in the 1980's as the subsidence was so bad. The Cannock mines fed the canal until as late as 1967 when it became a quiet backwater.

  I went to school here and took a skip along memory lane. Both of my schools have been replaced. Chase Terrace burnt to the ground soon after I left and the Victorian buildings of Burntwood First School are now genteel apartments.

 Chasewater used to be a barren, boggy wilderness but has become a huge draw for day trippers and teemed with people attracted to this 'country park' on the doorstep of the urban masses.  It now boasts a heritage railway on the old colliery line and enough tea stops to keep you entertained as you watch the sailing boats and waterskiers. The reservoir provided the water for the Curly Wyrley and was an integral part of the network between coal and its goal. The M6 Toll road seems to have injected a bit of redevelopment in sleepy Chasetown.  Burntwood was always betwixt the rural staffs countryside and the urban sprawl never too sure of where it stood.  As a place to grow up it had an element of insulation from the wilder extremes of the big city and offered a portal to the wilds of Cannock Chase and beyond. 

A canal link to the Cannock mines is severed at Watling Street just beyond Chasewater. The Cannock Extension line has been renovated from Norton Canes back to the Curley Wyrley in a cut as straight as a die. This is an isolated canal of rural beautitude, peaceful and serene, forgotten but functional.  A secret spot protected and conserved by that merry band volunteers whose only reward is quiet pride in their slice of utopia.  This is my fourth wonder of the Midlands canal system as it is a place to stop and stare and meditate about human ingenuity and sheer bloody minded desire for industry.   It passes through a rural stretch of Wyrley Common and the old Brownhills colliery where the basin is distinct.