Pub Walks

 

Climb the footbridge at Berkswell and you get a pretty standard view of a railway station.  Tracks, a car park, gantries.  Turn to the left though and you can see the future.

One day this will be the Balsall Common Viaduct, a blade of white and grey concrete scything through the countryside and carrying HS2 trains to Birmingham.  The high-speed railway project continues, quietly, avoiding controversy, avoiding attention, a massive construction project that is cutting a diagonal across England.  When it's finished, we'll all be convinced it was always a great idea and we were actually always for it and complaining it doesn't go to more places.  Right now, it's a series of cranes and exposed earthworks that point to a brave new world.

Berkswell is actually closer to the village of Balsall Common, something which clearly irritates the local who wrote the Wikipedia page ("Even though the station is situated in the far larger community of Balsall Common, there are currently no plans to revert its name back to the more accurate ‘Berkswell & Balsall Common’).  British railway station names are a special magic, dear, and actually telling you where they are is probably about eighth on their list of priorities.

They did have a point, mind, because stepping out of the station brought me immediately into Balsall Common.  A long road of executive houses, two stories, each one subtly different enough to its neighbour to make it exclusive.  Wide stretches of driveway and carefully tended lawns, some of them with the must have 21st century addition, automatic gates with a video keypad.

It brought me to a pleasingly dense village centre.  My main beef with country living can be summarised as where do you get a pint of milk?  You're making a cup of tea, you've run out of milk; can you get somewhere in ten minutes to buy a replacement carton?  Usually the answer is a village store where the prices are hiked and the opening hours are erratic, which is why I prefer city living, but Balsall Common had a Tesco Express, as well as a Costa and a Domino's.  There were local businesses too, a pharmacy, an estate agent, a smattering of restaurants and takeaways - yet it was still unmistakably a village.  This was perhaps the halfway house between town and country I'd been looking for.

I followed the A452 north for a while.  Somewhere, behind the trees and the houses, construction work for HS2 continued, but I couldn't see any sign of it, and the traffic noise drowned out any digging.  I ducked down a side street lined with Victorian villas and thick hedges that overhung the pavement until the houses gave up completely and I was striding down the centre of a country lane.

There were two possible routes from Berkswell to my next station, Hampton-in-Arden: one to the east of the railway line and one to the west.  The one to the east had more appeal for me at first.  It was the one that would shadow the HS2 works, and would have avoided Balsall Heath entirely for a completely rural walk.  However, looking at the maps, I became anxious that footpaths and back roads would be severed by the construction.  I didn't fancy walking three miles to find myself in a dead end and having to turn back.

The western route wasn't quite so exciting but I swiftly fell for it.  Walking across fields and through trees, totally alone, the only accompaniment the sound of birds and the rustle of leaves.  I fell into a gleeful stupor, lost to my thoughts, lost in the landscape.

It wasn't anything special.  There weren't mountains or epic water features.  It was quiet, gentle.  The land rose and fell without drama.  It was still, unmistakably, undeniably, beautiful, a swathe of spring that I was happily trekking through.

My reverie was interrupted by a police helicopter swinging overhead.  We were still close to Birmingham Airport, and the motorways, and the city; this wasn't anywhere near as isolated as my fantasies told me.  The helicopter swooped once, then back again, then back again, and I suddenly realised that I was a man all alone in a field and that might be exactly what they were looking for.  They were barking into their radios - we've found the pervert sarge - and I was blithely strolling.  I tried to make the top of my head look as innocent as possible and finally it vanished from sight.

I cut across the backs of farm houses, long lawns scattered with plastic children's toys, and then behind a row of holiday cottages.  Each had a glass conservatory on the back and a mean fence with barbed wire and gravel on the path to give away intruders; an unpleasantly cynical spot.  A couple of stiles, a walk through some stinging nettles that decided to scrape every inch of my naked shins, then I was approaching a golf club.

I had built up a small fantasy about this part of the walk.  My Ordnance Survey had shown a large lake on the edge of the golf club, with a public footpath running down one side.  I imagined the ruddy-faced golfers, furious at me wandering onto their hallowed patch, while I produced the map and shouted "right of way!" at them.  I pictured them impotently cursing - perhaps throwing their silly little golfing tam o'shanters on the floor in frustration - while I strolled alongside the lake, smug.

Virtually every part of this little playlet I'd concocted was incorrect.  The golf club didn't turn its back on walkers round the lake; in fact, it encouraged them.  There were fishing spots built into the banks and numerous signs encouraging people to use their facilities.  The gentle, lonely, waterside stroll, meanwhile?  Absolute nonsense.  I'd seen fewer pedestrians on the A452.  There were dog walkers, hikers, elderly couples out for an afternoon stroll.

And the fishermen! Every other spot was occupied by a single man with a vast array of very expensive looking equipment.  Rods in various shapes and lengths.  Nets and tents and wagons.  Mysterious electronic devices.  These weren't fishermen, they were fishermen, taking their sport incredibly seriously and spending accordingly.  It was a weekday afternoon and yet they'd all carved out time and energy to sit by a lake.  I didn't see a single fish, by the way.

I followed a young couple with a pitbull who were unashamedly smoking a joint until I found a spot I could overtake them and get out of their oversweet wake.  I crossed a small wooden bridge and emerged from the woods to see Hampton-in-Arden in the distance.  It wasn't quite the shining city on the hill, but it was much welcome.

By this point I was starting to flag.  It had been a long, active day, in roasting heat with very little cover.  I could feel my skin prickling and burning, and in the next few days it would turn a lovely shade of brown.  My knees were starting to complain - I may not be young - and I was down to my last bottle of water.  It didn't matter though, because there was a pub.  A little country pub.

I crossed a field of random horsey material - jumps, barrels, and a white plastic chair for the overseer to watch from - then walked down a narrow alleyway to the fringes of Hampton-in-Arden.  I was, it turned out, at the bottom of the hill, and the village was at the top.  With a sigh, I hauled my flagging carcass up the slope, pausing to rest on the odd wall, thinking about that pub.  That pub.

Hampton-in-Arden looked exactly how a village called Hampton-in-Arden should look.  Rustic weatherbeaten cottages.  Painted plaster exteriors.  A quiet church surrounded by trees and a silent graveyard.  A coffee shop, closed, but promising sweet treats and locally sourced produce.  It was English to an embarrassing degree.

I headed for the pub.

I will admit, I was slightly put off by the blackboard outside.  Next right - Ibiza-style garden.  That wasn't why I was here.  An Ibiza-style garden would wreck my English fantasia.  I didn't want to have teenagers "largin' it" and drinking fishbowl cocktails while pounding Eurobeats shook the foundations.  I consoled myself with the thought that I didn't want to sit outside anyway; I wanted to be inside with a nice cool pint.  I worked my way round the building to the entrance.

The Ibiza-style garden turned out to be some plastic grass with garden chairs on it; if that's what Ibiza's like I'm not sure why Pete Tong keeps going back.  There were a couple of ladies sat on the chairs, vaping, while indeterminate music played.  I tried the door.  It was locked.

"It don't open until five, love," one of the women called.

NO! screamed my brain.  NO NO NO!  That pub had kept me going,  I had two hours until my pre-booked train home.  I was going to spend it getting lightly toasted in a genteel English pub.  This ruined everything.  

I smiled at the woman.  "Oh really?  Thank you."  Inside my brain said burn in hell, harlot.

Hampton-in-Arden was dead to me after that.  It could be as charming and pretty as it liked; having one pub and not having it open in the day meant it was basically a cultural desert and deserved to be bombed into a crater.  

Oh look, a characterful war memorial on a picturesque village green surrounded by trees.  Go shove it up your hoop.

I grumpily stalked to the railway station.  Instead of loitering on the platform until my scheduled train I'd buy a ticket into Birmingham; at least I could find something to occupy me at New Street for a couple of hours.  (A pub, perhaps).  Fortunately, Hampton-in-Arden's station wasn't especially pretty.

I headed down to the platform and drank my bottle of water.  It tasted like ashes in my mouth.  It could've been a lovely beer and instead it was water.  I hated it.  I hated this village.

I may have a problem.

Estate of Play

 

One positive of this hobby ("hobby") is you never know what you're going to get.  On arrival, a station can seem like any other.  Long platforms, a bridge, wires whistling overhead.  In the West Midlands, the street furniture painted in a corporate orange.  Then you wander outside and you find a kangaroo on the ticket office.

I was in Canley, on the outskirts of Coventry, and the kangaroo commemorated one of its most famous sons.  Sir Henry Parkes was born in poverty in Canley and, after struggling to make a living in the UK, emigrated to the colony of Australia in the early 19th century.  He developed an interest in politics and then, further to that, Australian self-determination.  He was named the "Father of Federation", a strong advocate for Australia's colonies joining up to form their own nation.  Sadly he died in 1896, never seeing it bear fruit, but when the country did become a self-governing federation in 1901 he was lauded.

The kangaroo is a nice way of commemorating a man who, let's be honest, got the hell out of Canley and never came back.  It also replaced a statue that was outside a local primary school named after Sir Henry, and which was smashed to pieces by vandals in the 90s; a slightly less respectful tribute.  

Beyond the station car park there was a long stretch of factory.  Half of it was a pile of rubble and the rest was closed and awaiting demolition.  Canley originally sprang up as a neighbourhood for workers at the Standard Triumph car factory, over the railway line; other industries followed to take advantage of its trained workforce.  In the 1970s, though, the car manufacturers (by then part of British Leyland) closed forever, and the rest of the industry has been trickling away ever since.

I walked down to a dual carriageway, where a formerly brownfield site was being turned into a block of flats.  Most of the Triumph site was converted to retail and low-level factory units and warehouses, though the Standard Triumph Social Club still remains, and there's a logo of the cars on the corner of the road as a memorial.  I descended into a dark underpass, glad of the shielding from the unusually hot May sun, and re-emerged in Canley proper.

Coventry planned Canley as a new forward thinking estate for its residents.  They'd have good, clean, insulated homes, at reasonable rents, close to their employer and with shops and schools to support them.  Work began in the 1930s, and it was the prewar streets I was walking along now.  There was a good sized recreation ground, some newer infill, and then a row of shops that hinted to a different story to this area.

Normally, this row on a pre-war housing estate would be pretty standard.  A local shop.  A hairdresser.  One or two takeaways.  Maybe a tanning salon.  The centrepiece of this row was the Wonton Joe Supermarket, which sounds like something your dad called the local immigrant-run shop when he got told he couldn't use ethnic slurs any more.  It's not what you'd normally expect to see, but the reason for it is tucked away to the south.  In the 1960s, the University of Warwick (not Coventry, a fact that apparently riles the city to this day) was founded on a campus not far away.

This means that what was built as a place for families has quietly started to become infiltrated with students.  Selling council houses off didn't help, as they became private lets, and then they could be filled with half a dozen teenagers with low standards.  Canley's become something it shouldn't have been, a dormitory.

 

 

I ended up on Charter Avenue, a long impressive artery that marks the estate's southern border.  Two lanes in each direction with plenty of grass and trees, all designed to sweep you and the traffic away and out of the city.  It'd look marvelous with a tram running along it, and, indeed, it's a possible route for Coventry's Very Light Rail, a kind of minibus version of a tram developed by the University of Warwick and currently getting government funding.  It'd be a way of getting some of the advantages of trams without having to pay for them and, as we know, second best is better than nothing.  I suppose.  

Whether the VLC ever makes it out here is another matter.  Obviously, the construction times have slipped, and the funding has shifted, and then the proposed routes covering the whole of the city have shifted to "maybe the airport?" and "probably the university?" and not to where people live.  It reminds me of Merseytram, that massive scheme to give Liverpool three tram lines which was hamstrung by the city's insistence they build it through residential areas without access to transport and ending up in Kirkby town centre rather than a nice sexy airport line for the tourists.  The people who actually need good transport aren't necessarily the ones who are going to get it.

At Mitchell Avenue I crossed a social and architectural dividing line.  Only half the estate was finished when the Second World War hit, so construction was naturally suspended.  Afterwards, there was a need for new buildings, fast.  Instead of brick, the homes on this side of the estate were BISF houses: a steel framed structure developed by the British Iron and Steel Federation.  They could be put up quickly, like a prefab, but much more permanent.

 

 

There was an estate of these houses back in Luton when I was growing up.  They ran along a ridge above Vauxhall Way and their metal construction gave the area the nickname "Tin Town".  I always liked them, partly because their position gave them a commanding view, partly because the houses were all painted different colours.  It gave them a glamour the other council homes in the town didn't have.  I was disappointed to learn that most of them have since been clad to try and improve their energy efficiency and the colours have pretty much vanished, replaced by boring standard beiges.  

It was a similar story here, with white being the standard hue, though some people who'd bought their houses had veered into a cream.  There were long stretches of grass everywhere, the front gardens spilling into their neighbour, and wide verges.  Mature trees shaded me as I walked.  It was all so civilised.

Appearances can be deceptive, however.  As I reached a small chippy, a teenage boy ran out to a car parked in the layby and he took a folded note from the driver.  "How sweet," I thought.  "He's getting the lunch order for his mum."  It was only when he dashed down the alley to the side of the chip shop, into the estate, while the car took off, that I realised: "Oh.  I think that was a drug deal."

I'm afraid I'm a bit naive around drugs.  The thing is, I really like booze.  Booze makes me happy and amused and gives me all the highs I need.  Plus, and this is a very important factor, if I want some alcohol I can wander down any High Street and find some.  I don't have to loiter on a street corner or chat to a pimply youth or buy something that could be baking powder in a plastic bag.  If this makes me a boring old fart with no sense of adventure, so be it.  I will be happily getting toasted over here with a nice pint of lager while you're caning it on amphetamines and we can both have a nice night out.

The point is, I don't spend much time in the company of people doing dodgy deals, and it was a bit of a shock for me.  I walked along the pavement for a while with a sort of stunned mindset.  I'm not anti-drugs - do what you want to do to have a good time - but it was a bit surprising to see it in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

The path beneath my feet was scrawled with chalk instructions: a hopscotch game, then circles with "jump here!" and "hop here!".  It was all sweetly naive, the kind of innocent play that I thought children today didn't do because they were all shooting each other on their X-Boxes.  At the end it asked How much fun was that? and then a scale of 1 to 10.  That's a truly 21st century child, not letting you get away with anything without rating it afterwards.  I didn't partake, incidentally, because nobody needs to see that much blubber bouncing.

Some of the residents had set up seats on the front lawns and were chatting and drinking tea.  I was envious of their drinks.  It really was extremely hot, and I was very exposed on the road.  I'd timed it badly, walking at the point where the day was at its hottest.  The houses became small industrial units again, a road called Falkland Close hinting at their date of construction, and a faded sign on a lamppost promised me hot food from the "Toastbusters".

Tile Hill originally came with a level crossing, but that slowed down the trains en route, so a few years ago it was replaced with a bridge.  That seemed to open up the whole area for new development and now there were houses and flats in what had once been countryside.  I walked down the side road to the station, a convoluted route under the bridge, dog-legging past the car park and back on myself to reach the building.

I'd just missed a train so I settled down and ate my lunch in the cool shaded waiting area.  It was a decent enough station, a proper commuter spot, though slightly ruined by the extensive ramps to give access to the footbridge.  You saved a few quid on lifts, well done; it looks horrible though.

One innovation I'd never seen before was sign language on the next train indicator.  I'd seen those video screens at the larger stations, where a filmed person gave the next platform info, but this was a small computer graphic.   

Her movements were a little jerky, and her look was slightly off, meaning she resembled a Sim.  I was waiting for her to shake her arms above her head in frustration then mime hunger.  (I may have been a little cruel to my Sims).  

With suburbia behind me, it was time to venture into the countryside.  At least I wouldn't see anyone buying coke out there.  Hopefully.

How New Train Lines Are Funded

Interior of the Department of Transport.  The Minister sits on a large throne.  

Enter the Chief Executive of a Regional Council.

MINISTER: Speak.

CHIEF EXEC: Hello your honour.  I come from the provinces.  We'd quite like to reopen a railway line into our biggest city.  It used to be a freight line, so all the track is there.  We need five stations and four trains.  It'll cost a billion pounds.  Can I have the money please?

MINISTER: I'll give you a tenner.

CHIEF EXEC: Haha, that's funny.

MINISTER: ?????

CHIEF EXEC:  No, it'll cost a billion pounds.

MINISTER: I'll give you a hundred million.

CHIEF EXEC: We can't build anything for that.

MINISTER: Alright, fifty million.

CHIEF EXEC: That's not how negotiating works.

MINISTER: One hundred million but you can only have two stations and no trains.

CHIEF EXEC: How do we run a railway without trains?

MINISTER: Well that's your problem.

CHIEF EXEC: We need a billion pounds.

MINISTER: Three hundred million, two stations and one train.  You're killing me here.

CHIEF EXEC: If there are only two stations it won't be cost effective.

MINISTER: Alright three.  But none of them can have lifts.

CHIEF EXEC: What about disabled people?

MINISTER: Fuck 'em.

CHIEF EXEC: Five hundred million, three stations, and lifts, and two trains. 

MINISTER: Also the service can't terminate in the city.

CHIEF EXEC: But that's the whole point of it! 

MINISTER: Yeah, but then we have to find room for your train in the big terminus.  It's a whole hassle.  It can stop out on the edge of town and people can change.

CHIEF EXEC: That'll mean it won't be as effective and the passenger numbers will be lower.

MINISTER: It'll be cheaper though.

CHIEF EXEC: Ok. Five hundred million, three stations, and lifts, and two trains.

MINISTER: Sorry, it's four hundred million now.  You'll have to find the last hundred million yourself.

CHIEF EXEC: Why?

MINISTER: Fancied it.

CHIEF EXEC: The Council Tax payers won't like it.

MINISTER: Oh, you can't put up Council Tax.  You'll have to cut something.  Those disabled people are getting lifts now.  Get rid of some of their services.  It all balances out.

CHIEF EXEC: Fine.  

MINISTER: Great doing business with you.

CHIEF EXEC: You do realise I'll be back in five years asking for the rest of the money to finish the project, only it'll cost twice as much by then?

MINISTER: It's alright, I won't be here in five years.

CHIEF EXEC: Also I have this bypass I want to build that costs two billion pounds?

MINISTER: Hand me my rubber stamp.

Mapless

 

I took the train yesterday and I was idly looking at the ads on the walls when something occurred to me.  There are no Merseyrail maps on the 777s.  There are plenty of spaces where there could be one - where there used to be one - but they haven't bothered at all anywhere on here.  And it's not because they're drowning in advertising revenue either, because those "owned by you" posters are still all over the place.

You could argue that having the electronic line diagram means there's no need for them any more, but that's not true.  The diagrams above the door tell you where to change trains for the Northern or Wirral or City lines; they don't tell you what's on those lines.  If you're on a train from New Brighton planning on getting to, say, Cressington, there's no way of planning your route.  Until you reach Central or Moorfields you won't know which direction to get a train in. 

This seems to me to be a basic piece of wayfinding information that should be everywhere.  On top of that, the Merseyrail map is a piece of local iconography that should be shared.  I'm not sure why they're missing; it seems like a really daft thing to overlook.

If they're unwilling to give up the valuable ad slots - though, as I say, they don't seem to be snapped up - then these hatches in the carriage ends seem like a perfect slot for a sticker with the Merseyrail map on it.   A small piece of info to make the traveling experience easier and more comfortable.  You can't have too many maps.

Playing With Myself

Look, it's me playing with toys on video again!

Do you ever think you may have too much time on your hands?

Thank you again to anyone who donated to my Ko-fi and made this video possible.  I'm sure you regret it now.

Placemaking

Northampton may not actually be the furthest I've ever traveled for this blog, but it felt like it.  Somewhere like Newcastle or Carlisle or even Worcester feels like a part of the larger whole.  I can draw a thematic link from where I am on Merseyside to there.

Northampton, though?  Northampton felt like I was in The South.  It's not, technically, but it certainly felt London-adjacent.  The train I was on was headed to London; there were destinations like "Milton Keynes" and "Leighton Buzzard" in the announcements.  It felt like I was straying out of my bailiwick, which is odd, considering The South is where I was born and brought up.  Perhaps, after thirty years, I can finally say I'm a Northerner.

It certainly greets you with open arms.  While Rugby's 21st century ticket hall was perfunctory, Northampton was gleefully epic, a redevelopment in 2015 gifting it a proper welcome to the town.  Plenty of light, retail spaces tucked away, clean toilets and information boards everywhere.  It was fantastic.  In some ways, it's too good for a station that only gets four trains an hour - two to New Street, two to Euston. 

It also does amateur station art right.  Regular readers (hello you!) will know of my hatred for kids' drawings as "art" on stations.  It looks amateurish and it's mainly there because it's cheap.  Northampton had art by young people on its platform bridge, but it was final exam pieces from a local college and as such was way more interesting.  I had a pleasing wander down taking in the works.

Then there's the All Aboard To Northampton project, started by delightfully-named station worker Elliott Badger, where boards in the hall have been devoted to collecting tickets to Northampton from every station in the UK.  Started in 2020, it's a wonderful confluence of railway nerdism, public art, and just a genuinely nice thing to do.  I spent a few minutes looking for my local stations on the board.  I'm pleased to report that Birkenhead Central is there, as is Birkenhead Park:

...but the Liverpool side is less well represented:

If you're looking for something to do on a day off and you live by a relatively obscure station, there you go.  Head to Northampton.

You actually won't have a bad time while you're there.  I didn't expect this at all - and perhaps my expectations were lowered after Rugby - but Northampton turned out to be a little gem.  It'll never grace a 1000 Places To See Before You Die list, it'll never challenge other cities for tourist dollars, but it featured a neat, compact town centre, some pleasing buildings and was great to visit.

As you'd expect from a county town, Northampton has a long history going back to the Bronze Age, and its mishmash of architecture came from all points of history.  The beautiful central church, All Saints', dates from the 17th century; there's Victorian grandeur and more modern practicality.  Streets have names like "Swan Yard" and "Derngate".  It was busy with shoppers and, this being the school holidays, teenagers being disproportionately excited at being in town on a weekday.

At the centre of the town is the Market Square, an epic space recently upgraded.  It was a pleasure to stroll round, taking in the new, more permanent stalls.  A water feature to one side featured jets of water shooting in the air, much to the delight of gurgling toddlers, and it felt like a proper central space for the community.  I thought back to the continuing, slow motion tragedy of Birkenhead Market, where its redevelopment has been astonishingly unpopular no matter what the council try, and thought they should send a few people here to find out what can be done.  Never mind sticking traders in a converted Argos - make a place. 

I wandered for a while, feeling a little guilty.  I'd not had high hopes for Northampton - in fact, it had taken me a tremendous amount of effort to stop saying I was going to Nottingham.  It was, to me, a place that existed, and didn't really make an impression on anyone.  Could you find it on a map?  Could you name something interesting about Northampton?  I know I certainly couldn't.  It seemed like it had spent hundreds of years quietly getting on with being a decent place to live and work and not bothering anyone.

I paused for a pint.  Obviously it wasn't a perfect place; there was a fair amount of down at heel buildings and businesses.  I'd had to dodge a mass of Just Eat cyclists occupying the pavement by McDonalds and KFC.  There was a huge, hideous leisure development, incorporating a cinema and a gym that occupied a whole block and seemed to be pretty much vacant.  

I headed back to the station.  The board that recorded the passing bikes in the cycle lane had ticked off another twenty or so riders.  A pair of mums had a loud, joyous conversation while their kids played around them.  A spread of graffiti on a developer's hoarding was, for some reason, Alice in Wonderland themed - we're all mad here.  It was all good.