A Bimble Down the Cut (Fazeley-Grand Union loop)

Everyone knows that Birmingham has more canals than Venice. If you are a Midlander it is more than likely that you played by a canal, or in one, during a mis-spent youth. Childhood memories are linked with adventure, following these endless watery hollloways further than we could dare to venture. They were avenues of escape; portals into another world.  The closer to Birmingham you got, the filthier they became. Now they are in quite good nick. Gentrification has been slow to drift beyond Gas St. Basin but now Birmingham is in hyper-drive fuelled by student accommodation.  The canals are cleaner than ever as citizens of Brumagem and the Black Country find pride in their waterways once more.  In the midst of urban blight you don't need to go far to find a bucolic spot.  Dip below the chaos and filth of backstreet Brum and you are in a verdant world.

With industry in mind I determined to find an off road route into the mean streets of Brum from my hometown of the Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield. I am, belatedly, coming to see the benefits of living within cycling distance of some of the most intensively industrialised landscapes in the UK.  The Plants Brook runs from Sutton Park downhill toward the River Tame and a cycle path through the New Hall Valley follows this route that was once dotted with mills using the energy of gravity to grind corn. Sutton Coldfield, High Street is essentially a long dam funnelling the brook through the town from Sutton Park and into the valley. A popular path has been created that follows the brook through Walmley to Pype Hayes Park, once famed for the biggest fireworks display in Brum. Not everyone is sad to see the back of the 'bunfire'! From here you jump onto the Birmingham - Fazeley canal to follow an off road route all the way into Birmingham and indeed on to London if you wish.

 The Fazeley canal runs from Tamworth where it links up with the Coventry Canal.   It enters the Birmingham conurbation at Minworth where there is a huge ASDA which was once a more impressive Carre-Four in the 1980's. We went for breakfast on special occasions. I still go in for the breakfast deal and to reminisce and read a magazine in the upstairs cafe. The canal takes on a post- industrial air as it passes Castle Vale, a new town built on the site of an aerodrome used in the war. Spitfires were built here and are commemorated in a huge metal sculpture. The site lost out to a bigger plot a few miles south which became Birmingham airport. The Vale is handily placed for the factory workers of JLR and housed Birmingham over-spill populations in the 1960's. 34 high rise flats and a new estate housed over 5000 people in a utopian new town. The Ballardian nightmare lasted until the 90's when the social experiment was finally deemed a catastrophe and the high rises were demolished.

The Jaguar Land Rover site is spick and span and the old site of Fort Dunlop is next door, once the largest factory in the world. These plots occupy a vast area where the Spitfire aeroplanes were once made and tested. The canal runs unwittingly beside industry which is in constant flux.  The energy of JLR and logistics companies seems to have brought about activity and new builds on tiny plots rising from the Ashes of once mighty industrial giants like Hardy Spicer and GKN . On the shoulders of giants the area is betwixt decline and constant reinvention.

The Tyburn Road runs parallel through industrial units the Jaguar plant. Scent marks the changing scenery as lurid dog roses give way to the belch of a KFC or the acrid burn of a Dunlop tyre. Nature thrives alongside the faded red brick factory units. An incongruous cowslip provides a memory of Easter as a heron launches into the blue. 

The awkward juxtaposition of nature and brutalism continues until concrete wins at Bromford.  This is where the nexus of a transport network that was the envy of the world begins. Under the bridge and into the future. This is Gravelly Hill Interchange, if you are up high, or Salford Junction if you float below. Once a site of gravel pits at the base of a glacial valley, Gravelly Hill is the start of Birmingham proper. Motor city is hemmed in by a ring of highway.

The spaghetti above is an incredible sight, spitting out tin boxes in 36 different directions. Nearly 600 concrete columns, up to 80 feet high. Opened in 1972 it was a modern wonder of the world soon to be replicated by engineers the world over. But this was the biggest and the best. They said it couldn't be done. The last hurrah of famed British engineering expertise before the stakes and the dollars rose and the world went truly bonkers.  Two rivers and two rail lines also vie for attention beneath the colossus but it is the confluence of three canals running in four directions that draws interest. The Tame Valley canal runs west and the Birmingham and Fazeley canal runs on through Aston and into the city. I turned 270 degrees onto the mighty Grand Union Canal.

The weight of history demands that you stop and wonder.  Thoughts of silence are ridiculous as the traffic thunders overhead but there is a stillness in this land that time forgot.  This route allowed the canal trade to avoid tolls and crack through Birmingham avoiding the mainline controlled by greedy magnates and get rich quick merchants. The Tame Valley line opened in 1844 allowed a quick route North to the Potteries and beyond. This part of the canal was originally a link with the Grand Union in shaving hours off a Birmingham passage along congested and contested  routes.

 This stretch goes through the badlands of Birmingham, charmless outskirts of warehouses and scrapyards.  There's brass in muck and the Taroni scrap kings made their pile here. Beyond the  impressionist lily pond below lay a sleeping monster made of metal. The unfathomable British habit of hanging plastic bags in trees suggested this had caught another hungry eye. Sometimes it is hard to discern what is modern art or waste in the city. Nature tries its best to recapture the wastelands and the canal and waterways people are relentless in their conservation and improvement. Beauty is never far away for those willing to look.

The green route through Nechells and Saltley belies the chaos above. Roundabouts, main roads and an expressway take you past local leisure complex, Stab City. The graffiti is sharp and even the geese have an edge to them. This pair would not let me pass for ten minutes until I had summoned the courage to defy the city hoods. 

At Camp Hill locks you can choose to head into bohemian territory of Digbeth or head for London.  These areas are now synonymous with another gang of hoods 'The Peaky Blinders' and you pass Bordesley Green, the home of their pub 'The Garrison'. 

The cut runs out to Small Heath and becomes greener with furtive graffiti artists lurking precariously in vantage points.

Once considered a green suburb Small Heath is full of fading factories redolent in red brick challenging time and dereliction to do its best. There is Brummie defiance here and sawmills and timber yards still line the cut where powerhouses of industry like BSA roared and rifles cracked. Birmingham is famed as the city of a thousand trades and its gun-makers were legendary. Small Heath was the centre of arms production which made it a target during the war.   It is an area that has seen a succession of immigration as the Commonwealth rushed to provide post-war labour. Over 50% of the population is of Pakistani/Bangladeshi heritage and this defines the Islamic culture of the area once you pop your head up from the canal.    

Most kids raised in Birmingham will know the Ackers where you canoed down a less than inviting canal chasing rats and were dragged round the assault course. It looks more inviting today but everything does from this level. 

The River Cole links up with the canal by Tyseley where a vast recycling site regenerates waste. Almost hidden between this towering monstrosity and a huge retail park is a small church that lies on the bank of the infant Cole and provides a link to the past that has been almost wiped off the map by concrete. 

If you know this area then the green passages that link the River Cole to daylight past Chelmsley Wood will surprise you in their tranquility. This is where Birmingham sprawls eastward and includes some of the poorest wards in the UK. The river provides a secluded oasis amidst urban chaos and the parks that line it provide another green lung. I followed the cycle path up to Smiths Wood and over toward Castle Bromwich. I started teaching here and gained a different perspective in my trial of fire.  In the heat greater bonds are formed and I look back on friendships and good times with colleagues with great fondness. I did get that sense of sickness at the end of each day at the ritual humiliation new teachers face in the classroom; a mix of anger and helplessness. Having to repeat the soul destroying dance the next day.   Most kids were wonderful but the unreachable few caused havoc. I remember javelins being thrown down the corridors and one that became embedded in a car. We rounded up those who had broken into the sports store but management deemed it too serious to take action! It might get in the paper they said. A few other things missed the press like a drama teacher taking the act of performance too far and a young teacher who missed five a side on a Friday due to being incarcerated for crimes never to be revealed. The psychological drain on a young teacher cannot be underestimated and I felt institutionalised.
  In the end I got quite good and was rewarded by management collapsing set 5 and 6 full of naughty boys for me to teach. I fell in love with the art teacher, made great friends and taught some of the best kids I have ever met.  My one top set were the only group to attempt 'The Heart of Darkness' albeit through the medium of 'Apocalypse Now' and a high point had been reached. I bit the bullet and bought a round the world ticket, in a rather peremptory act. I can remember the sense of release flying over the vastness of Canada letting five years of torment wash away.

Washwood Heath brought it back and I pushed on past Castle Brom. I am still to walk round the celebrated gardens in their exalted perch above the city. Maybe one day.

Drawing the circle to a close I passed the River Tame which runs under the M6. Mildly hallucinatory in my low fuelled state I wondered if the Anglian tribes that originally colonised this area of Mercia ever dreamt of concrete. I sprinted past the Spitfires and rejoined the canal at the Tyburn House. Gallows humour followed me home. 

Riding a bike is a psychogoegraphic exploration of the skull cinema, rushing with endorphins to start and ending with a depleted sack of unwashed mail.