A Bimble down the Tame Valley Up the Rushall Canal

North Birmingham is vast and often overlooked by visitors. Professionals and city slickers are drawn to areas around the University and the south of the city; the upwardly mobile favouring leafy Edgbaston and the more bohemian craving the bohemian cool of Moseley. Exotic tales of a Balti triangle within easy access of the regenerating city are as far as many are willing to reach. There are always tales of new areas about to reach peak cool, the most recent is Stirchley, but I remain unconvinced. The reason is that Birmingham is a city where even the locals get lost, bamboozled, without a clue as to how they got where they are.
Anyone trying to drive is in for a tour of duty, as Satnav has given up on Brum. I know many who would not dare to contemplate Birmingham by car and Spaghetti Junction fills them with dread. Although it was built for transport, firstly canals and latterly roads, it is a navigator's nightmare.  There is so much to see but you need to make a plan if you want to get there.  A map is no good. I spent years wondering how to get from Broad Street to Bristol Street and it takes mental strength to get your footing. And now they have ripped it all up again!
The only constant is the canal system so my advice would be if you can master the cut then you will be a Brummie, my son.  Even fewer newbies venture up the hill to explore North Birmingham so its left to a mass of humanity. The area is slowly merging into the softer pudding of the Black Country where the motorways interchange. A range of cultural disparities have developed in relative isolation so each area and ward has distinct characteristics. Aston, Erdo, Lozells and Kingstanding have pleasures the vulgar herd can never understand.

Attempting to find a path through this miasma of tightly packed housing I use North Birmingham cycle path 535.  This route links one of the green lungs of Birmingham, Sutton Park with the city.  There is another contentious claim that, 'Birmingham has more parks than any city in Europe.' For a city so green there are a lot of brownfield sites  Queen Victoria,famously, drew the blinds in her carriage when she passed the Black Country by train.  But I knew there was more to this green and pleasant space.

Eager to prove my thesis I dove down the hill from Banners Gate on to the new cycle path which  offered an off road option through a landscape where it is hard to see the woods for the cars. Travel writers who make epic walks often suddenly skip 40 miles when writing about this stretch from Cannock Chase to Hollywood. Well I wasn't having that.  The path links a series of parks following the course of a brook, breathing spaces for Brummies on lockdown.  Witton Lakes fall down to Brookvale Park where George Road is lined with elegant town houses looking out onto the lake. Maybe the only place in the UK where a palatial 4 bed house with lake views can be yours for just over £200,000. 

 The path runs out at this Greek school, another sign of the community of settlers of disparate heritages in the area. I played football here at the back of the huge Witton cemetery viewed from the M6 which passes overhead. Many lost hours have been spent by drivers stuck here staring at their mortality in static jams.  Advice for the unwitting to pay the toll or the ferryman awaits.

There is beauty in monstrosity, and its worth spending a while soaking in the wonder of these structures.  Its an edgeland, a liminal world where reality has been obliviated to establish monsters traipsing across the blighted landscape.  Giant spider legs carry concrete and noise creating an unresolved sense of danger. The adrenalin of being in a secret zone kicks you on.

Engineers followed the route of the Tame Canal which was established in 1844, late in canal history. It blazed a straight route between Brum and the Black Country and settled scores once and for all. This was when necessity was the mother of invention, a time when Britain didn't mess around. Faced with twisting, convoluted canals tied up with tolls, engineers created a veritable motorway, straight as a die. Any argument over until rail eclipsed it. The M6 followed the same argument but it is the canal link that fascinates; a past highway just as important to the commerce of the UK and the city of a thousand trades.

 Centuries clash as blacktop gives way to cobbles and towpaths designed for horses. Ancient spires of industry poke through the warehouse and factories that line the cut. Ubiquitous plastic chairs decorate makeshift outdoor canteens as workers suck up fresh air and vitamin D before diving back in to red brick caverns.

 Beauty and carnage dwell side by side.

 Crossing the arteries of main roads falling down into the city,  the canal takes you past the BCU sports fields at Moor Lane.  A concerned resident videos the outflow from a factory which appears to have bleached the canal for the past mile.  At other times it is hard to pinpoint where you are, a testament to Birmingham's inscrutability.

A silent stream cuts through the heavily populated Perry Barr and is soon to become a star in a showpiece event.  Alexandra Stadium is rising to the left of the cut alongside a centre for gymnastics.  An aquatics centre is also planned in nearby Sandwell.The 2022 Commonwealth Games has the potential to transform North Birmingham. It could provide vital uplift for the area and could be inspirational for local communities. Things are about to happen here and I hope this secret is about to be revealed.

Perry Barr is a stepping stone for many aspirational Brummies. Perry means small in olde english and the heights of aspirational suburbia are above, past Great Barr, where you find the green dream of Sutton and Walsall. The gold at the end of the rainbow lies in places like Roman Road and Four Oaks where millionaire footballers live next too successful businessmen . The lock-keepers cottage at the top a flight of 13 locks is a reminder of the strategic importance of this spot. It is a barr signifying the barrier between Birmingham and the Black Country. Signs both ways should say 'abandon all hope ye who enter' to satisfy both allegiances. The term 'barr' is ubiquitous around here suggesting an ancient gateway to a Northern wilderness. 

Beyond the barr, it is not long before you reach a stretch of canal that I would call one of the 'seven wonders' of the Midlands canal system. I haven't decided the rest yet but I plan to discover them. A magnificent, deep green jungle cuts through the heart of industrial Birmingham providing an Amazonian link to the Black Country.  It runs straight as a die to an emerald vanishing point overhung by creeping wilderness.  Towering bridges vault above offering the multitudes a tantalising glimpse of a peaceful escape route.

This drop bridge offers a tempting look into a second wonder of the Midlands canal system which is the Rushall flight of locks that lead up to the suburbs of Walsall. On a sunny day this is a stunning location, with dandelion heads flying in the breeze and mayflies flitting,  it deserves that you stand and stare and rest awhile. I like to walk here at dusk, a brief nod from others who know the secret.

Quiet and solitude can be found within sight of the flyover which connects the M5 and M6. Once you pass this mighty interchange you climb slowly into a calmer world. The canal passes the West Brom training ground and an immaculately landscaped school mysteriously named Q3 a, part of the equally sinisterly named Grace Academy.  Dartmouth and Hamstead pupils may feel that anything is an improvement on what went before.

Lucky home-owners back onto the peace of the cut. They bask in sun traps at the bottom of their gardens observing nature in its May glory.  This is more of a swans-way these days as only an intrepid boater would take this route.  As the scenery becomes increasingly rural and you pass the isolated 'lime kilns park' the locks remind you that you are gaining height at a considerable rate.  The mountains of the Midlands mind are close and worth a detour.

I ventured up to Barr Beacon to gain the vantage point across several counties that this high point affords.  Brummie wags claim this is a mountain as it is above 600 feet.  If that is so then you can see a few more mountains from here. The council claim eleven counties can be seen on its information board and at 774 feet you really get a good view. The spires of Lichfield Cathedral can be seen to the North; look South and it is all downhill to Birmingham and beyond. Wales is a bit of a strain on the eye though!   

Next to the Rushall canal is open heath land where aeronauts like Amy Johnson used the height to glide across Midland skies.   Why the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic chose Alrdridge Aerodrome we will never know but we were told in school that this was the highest point between here and Moscow. Heading uphill through the cocounut scent of Gorse you gain quite a view of the Birmingham skyline from the memorial.  Another chance to imagine what Queen Victoria made of it all when she pulled down the blinds down.  The view from Barr Beacon would have been blasted heaths that would make Shakespeare and Tolkien wonder.  Furnaces and open cast mines, fire and all the smoke of Mordor, as far as the eye could see and right round the distant Wrekin.