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. 

A Bimble down the Cut (Spaghetti Junction to Birmingham)

Spaghetti Junction stands as a symbol of the eternal regeneration of the second city. The logistical centre of Britain. I dipped below once again to find my metropolis beyond the geometric pallasades and the welcoming arches.

A memorial to a Detective Inspector, who fell here, reminds me of the isolation under the pillars and flyovers. A real location for a crime drama.  The thought made me move quicker than I should through the underpass. Shafts of light illuminating graffiti.

This is the other way into town along the older Birmingham - Fazeley canal.  The Grand Union is the other option. Seen from carriages above it doesn't promise much. It is surrounded by scrap metal yards, recycling centres and fading factories. A selling point is the ease of access to the routes out of here.

This waterway feels ignored but still has charm. It was clearly made for horse drawn traffic and is narrower than its younger neighbour. The cobbles are punctuated with little rises or bridges so it is a roller-coaster ride on a bike.  These tributaries feed factories and demarcate industry but are almost forgotten. This one is Carter's arm, which is still full of water. The 'arms' allowed access to water for the factories of a thousand trades.  Aston was a centre of such trade with the canals creating an island of industry. Relics of a bygone era like 'Aston Iron Coach Works' can be found here amongst soap works and brass works.  One of the wonders of Birmingham, to the growing subculture of urban geographers, is the number of abandoned buildings that have been left for posterity. Until recently the area was left to decay.  Entrepreneurs are now snapping up buildings redolent of historic charm and history. Some are becoming museums celebrating the manufacturing trades ranging from pens to coffins to guns. Below is Newman's Coffin Works. My favourites are the Smith and Pepper Jewellery factory in Hockley and the curiosity that is the Pen Museum celebrating Birmingham's steel pen trade. Perhaps we can have a museum for every one of Brum's thousand trades.

In the Jewellery Quarter you can find a workshop that has been left as it was when the last silversmith downed tools and left the building. Slowly, Birmingham is waking up to this living history and conserving some of these buildings. As eyes look toward Digbeth and HS2 redevelopment I wonder how many will be left for public exploration.  There are some real gems which could be a focal point for tourism and reveal the multi faceted story of Birmingham.

Typhoo basin is not far down the Digbeth Branch from Aston Junction and is a fascinating example of an abandoned building with a rich history which will surely become a central part of the HS2 programme. For now the tea factory is a draw for photographers looking for derelict places to document. I'm yet to harden into a urban guerilla explorer so didn't attempt entry.

 If you peer over the bridge into Carter's Arm you will find a dirty channel of water and see a land that time forgot

The gas towers at Aston Waterlinks mark the disputed territory between the football teams. The grounds are less than 6.570 steps. Stadium Walks shows you how.  

The rivalry is intense and derbies are remembered for years, particularly when a goalkeeper makes a howler. Villa targeted the affluent suburbs after their success in the 1980's and have a wider fan base and a bigger stadium but the Blues are the perpetual underdogs and the city team. You can only be one or the other, there is no middle ground in this partisan affair.

The Aston flight of 11 locks from Spaghetti/ Salford Junction ends at Aston Junction. At the top lock you can choose to go left to Digbeth or head for the famous Farmers Bridge flight of 13 locks in the heart of the city.  I chose the latter as the city rose around me. Dereliction competes with reinvention and the impetus is student accommodation. There was a time when no-one wanted to live this close to the centre of the city.  Numerous Ballardian high rises of the 70's still dominate the inner ring ,a utopian social experiment undermined by human nature. 

The crumbling buildings by the canal remind me of when this canal was clogged with mud and shopping trolleys.  My childhood memory is of looking out of a window in the Science Museum which used to be near the imposing BT tower.

 The Science Museum used to look out upon a sorry looking cut filled with crud, a sad testament to the state of the city in the early 80's.  It now sits within Millenium Point, once a white elephant and now an integral part of the Eastside development. The future looks rosy even if the money pouring in is founded securely on a fairy's wing.  As you get closer to Cambrian Wharf the transformation intensifies. The builds look cheap and fast, breeze blocks boxes with cladding.  Foreign investors have poured money in with the promise of generation rent. Students and young professionals looking for studio life in the heart of a buzzing city looking forward to the future. 

Birmingham City University has taken full advantage of the boom in University life.  Utilising key spaces like Millenium Point they have moved operations from the less inviting Perry Barr backwaters to the centre of the shiny new East side.  Soon even the paternosters at the old UCE will be a distant memory as this is University positions itself as the University of the future. Along with its neighbour Aston University it has pushed cutting edge tech and science selling a lifestyle and marketing the city. It has drawn new generations of students who once looked southward to the red brick of Birmingham University. The denizens of the sedate, established option in the leafy suburbs of Edgbaston  must look on in horror at their urban upstarts and not a little enviously at their marketing skills and ability to accommodate just about anybody willing to part with a chunk of their future income.  Freed from regulation and snobbery these old polytechnics recognise that education is one of the few areas that Britain can exploit in the global market. 

Those entrepreneurs who are investing in Birmingham may well gain a return which will transform the city into a youthful, diverse and highly skilled workforce at the heart of national and global communications. I was taken aback at the pace and scope of building clearly targeted a young global market. 

The Farmer's Bridge Locks are an infamous barrier for boaters cruising through Birmingham. 13 locks fall in steep succession dropping 80 feet and would test the patience of boatmen until Telford built his mainline.  It was once a dark and dingy area to avoid. It is now buzzing with joggers and Brummies in the know taking a short cut under the city. It is narrow and cobbled and a few ignorant cyclists refuse to dismount. A cheer goes up when a bicycle ends up in the cut.   Thousands of boats still ply the locks as it is a right of passage after an easy approach.   At the top is Cambrian wharf with National Indoor Arena towering ahead.  A kempt toll house signals the strategic importance of this route since 1784, controlled by the mighty Birmingham Canal Navigations from the terminus at Gas St basin. They were the 'Peaky Blinders' of their day and keen to maintain their monopoly over the cut. At Gas Street you have choices to make as this is the fulcrum of the canal system.  Like the newly inaugurated 'Grand Central' at New Street Station this spot connects to all points of the compass.