Birmingham; Saturday, 23 June, 2018

I’d forgotten to switch the alarm on my phone off, so was woken up just after 7am, and after about half an hour of trying to get back to sleep admitted defeat and got up. Thankfully it did mean I was down to breakfast early and had a good selection to choose from.

After a leisurely breakfast I headed out of the hotel and over to the Cathedral to pick up the open-top sightseeing bus to take its tour of the city.

I did two full circuits taking in all of the sights before disembarking back at the Cathedral and then walking across town to Brindley Place to pick up my second tour of the day – this time of the canal network around the city.

I’d taken this tour when I had last visited Birmingham almost exactly five years previously, and I remember then that it passed quite quickly into countryside – so, given all the building work going on in the city centre, I was intrigued to find out whether the countryside was in retreat.

The tour headed out from Brindley Place and up through Sherbourne Wharf – which it hadn’t been able to do previously, past some very expensive looking apartment blocks.

Turning back onto the main line of the canal the boat did quickly leave the city behind and headed out into the countryside, but it wasn’t long before we reached an area that had previously been a long abandoned industrial site that has now been cleared and is clearly being prepared for building to commence, so whilst the countryside may remain at the moment, it won’t be for much longer.

Back in the city centre I headed up on to Broad Street and was in time to catch the open-top bus as it went past so I picked it up back round to the cathedral and then went in hunt of a very late lunch. In the end I headed back into Grand Central and had Sushi, which was the thing I’d actually wanted to have the previous evening.

My sushi cravings finally sated I caught the train a couple of stops out of town to Smethwick to visit Galton Bridge. Today it’s just a foot and cycle bridge over a railway line and a canal, but when it opened in the early 19th century this Thomas Telford construction was the highest single span bridge in the world. I had a quick look around, but there’s not much more to see than a single information board and views over the railway line, canal and the mouth of a canal tunnel, so I headed back to the station and caught the train back into town.

I had a bit of a wander around the city centre, though that proved to be a bit difficult with the combination of Saturday shopping crowds and the sheer amount of building work going on in the city both to extend the tram and general building and regeneration.

Eventually I made it back to the hotel, though not possibly by the quickest route, where I freshened up before popping round the corner to the mailbox to find somewhere to eat, having decided I didn’t want to face Birmingham’s chaos again.