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.