Birmingham; Monday, 20 December, 2010

In the original plan I was going to be spending today travelling between Frankfurt and Birmingham. Instead the key aim of the day would be to travel the 1KM between hotels, so I had pretty much the whole day to spare.

I’d decided to head out of the city for the morning and go out to the small town of Burton-on-Trent some 25 miles away. Calling Burton a small town is actually a bit of an injustice as it was the brewing capital of England. At one point a quarter of all beer brewed in Britain was brewed in this small town. Today it recalls that heritage by being home to the National Brewery Centre.

Arriving in the town the first thing that strikes you, even as the train doors open, is the smell of malted barley and hops in the air. Today, there is still a large amount of brewing going on, but it’s all done by big multi-nationals (the name Coors stands over the city where once Bass’s logo’s sat) in highly mechanised processes.

I had a wander through the town to the centre. Having looked around, and had my four free tasters (which in the end was the best part of a pint), I wandered back through the town and caught the bus over to the nearby city of Lichfield.

Lichfield is not particularly well known even in the UK (except for those where the dreaded phrase “Overhead line problems in the Lichfield Trent Valley area” has caused untold misery), especially not it’s cathedral which is a real surprise.

I was expecting a smallish cathedral, not the gigantic structure at the back of the town. Its three spires and Gothic architecture looking quite a bit like a (not much) smaller version of Cologne.

I had a long look around the Cathedral and was considering having a wander around town when I popped into the station just to check on train times back for later. At that point my plans for the day changed quite abruptly as the screens were flagging massive delays, the snow was coming back in and train services were already in a mess. I decided not to risk it and went for the train that was arriving at that moment, and I was lucky I did. It was 45 minutes before anything passed us in the opposite direction and as Lichfield is the end of the line, it would have been a very long wait if I had left it longer.

The train crawled back into Birmingham through yet another blizzard finally making it back into New Street around 30 minutes late. I walked back, through the snow to the hotel to pick up my bags and then walked them round to the Travelodge. The walk was only around a Kilometre, but with all the snow on the ground, and dragging a heavy case, it took nearly 30 minutes and I was absolutely shattered by the time I checked in.

After having a quick freshen up, I headed back into town to grab a bite to eat and have another wander around the market, before heading back to the hotel for a well-earned sleep.