Invest now in land at Gravelly Hill

OK, perhaps it won’t make much of a return for you today, or even your children or their grandchildren, but some point in the next 200 years it will pay off.

Firstly, for those of you who know it better by its nickname, I’m talking about the salubrious part of Birmingham otherwise called Spaghetti Junction.

You wouldn’t want to live there today, what with all those lanes of fuming traffic (and fuming drivers sat in the endless tailbacks).

But 200 years ago if you’d told someone that the noisy, messy and smelly inland harbours in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds would one day become some of the most desirable residences in their respective cities they would have had the same reaction to someone telling you to invest in housing by the M6 today.

Over the last couple of months I’ve spent several days in all three cities and in all cases the big developments have been around the canals.

Some of the most exclusive developments in Birmingham are around Old Turn Junction, the 18th Century equivalent of Gravelly Hill. The area around the Clarence Dock in Leeds is heaving with luxury flats, high end retailers and even a Casino.

It’s all a massive, and positive, change from the way canals were treated in the past, spending many years slowly decaying into little more than industrial tips and derelict waste grounds.

So, if you’re looking for a long term investment, just remember 200 years ago railways didn’t exist and 150 years ago the idea of the horseless carriage would have gotten you locked up in an asylum. Who knows what the next big thing in transport will be, and if it doesn’t require roads then Gravelly Hill will be the 22nd Centuries dream regeneration site.

Admittedly, it will probably also be the setting off site for a lot of those 22nd Century HGV driving holidays where you take a vintage 2002 Eddie Stobart lorry round the parts of the UK motorway network that are still navigable, but that will be “quaint” and post-post-industrial.

It isn’t Gluttony, its medicine

This is a long shot at trying to cover myself

The main reason for going back to Cadbury World, barely 10 months after last visiting was the free chocolate, and to stock up for Christmas.

So it’s entirely co-incidental, but exceptionally (cough, cough) convenient that (cough) this should (cough, cough) appear on the (coughing fit) BBC News (cough, hack, cough, cough) website today:

'Chocolate cough remedy' in sight:

Well, that visit to Bourneville appears to have cleared up my cough quite nicely.

The new exercise regime

I think I may have discovered a great new way to get fit, build muscle tone in your arms, and lose weight.

Unfortunately, it’s quite a specific plan and it does require nature to intervene.

To follow the fitness plan you need:

• 1 heavy suitcase on wheels, but with very low clearance between the wheels and the base of the suitcase


• 1 heavy fall of snow either having just taken place, taking place, or best of all both.


• A short walk

I’ve walked for miles before with a suitcase and it’s not been anywhere near as exhausting.

I dragged a very heavy suitcase the three miles from Hammerfest airport to the town centre without feeling the need to stop for water, though that was over heavily compacted snow so the wheels were able to turn easily.

However, both the walk from New Street to the Novotel on Saturday, and this evening’s walk from the Novotel to the Travelodge, were exhausting.

Partly not helped by the design of my bag acting more like a snow gathering device than a piece of luggage on wheels, but also not helped by it being “the wrong kind of snow”, or more importantly the wrong kind of re-frozen slushy stuff with a fresh heavy fall of snow over the top.

By the time I got to the hotel I felt like my arms were ready to come out of their sockets.

I’ll just have to hope that by Wednesday morning when I come to check out the snow has hardened into a compacted surface over which the wheels will run, otherwise I might have to be a lazy git and get a cab round to the station.

New Eyes

Today was a weird experience.

I was wandering around the city I’m visiting taking in the sights.

Nothing new in that, it’s what I’ve done in virtually every place I’ve been to.

Some places I’ve been to so often (Berlin, Cologne, Edinburgh, Glasgow) that I know the city centre pretty well.

But Birmingham is different. All those other places I’ve been to as a tourist and found my way round the city as a tourist. Birmingham though, I already know.

I’ve been to Birmingham for meetings on so many occasions that I’ve lost track of the number times I’ve wandered along New Street going between the station and a hotel or the hotel and a meeting or a meeting and the station or any other variation on that theme. There’s been periods when I’ve spent more time in a month in the city centre of Birmingham than I have in the city centre of London.

So none of the streets were new, none of the shortcuts a discovery no sudden squares opening up in unlikely places to reveal a cathedral.

But I was amazed by how much more of the city I’ve seen today, actually taken in through wandering slowly through looking at the buildings and the streets.

Of course I’ve probably really annoyed quite a lot of Brummies by walking slowly down the middle of the main shopping street on the last weekend shopping day before Christmas.

The main thing that was obvious was the number of really nice Victorian and Edwardian buildings in the city centre. Yes there are a few pretty awful buildings, it’s kind of what the West Midlands are famous for these days, but, Birmingham is still a really attractive city, particularly around the Canals.

It makes me wonder what I’d discover if I went for a holiday in Croydon…

Never Give Up

Well, I didn’t make it to Frankfurt.

But, undeterred I have adapted my plans and am now, less than 24 hours later, sitting on a train heading towards Birmingham.

It’s not what was in the original plan, but as the weather forecast deteriorates, and virtually every airport in the south closes its runway, I’m starting to think that I’ve had a lucky escape.

I could have gotten away yesterday, but I could, by now, be stranded in Germany.

There is still every chance that I could come a cropper in Birmingham, but the options for being able to get back are much greater when all that separates you is 150-odd miles of relatively flat land, rather than over 500 miles of land, three borders and the English Channel.

On the plus side, the weather in Birmingham is looking pretty good for the next couple of day, cold but very sunny.

And just to make things that little bit sweeter, I’ve booked myself for a revisit to Cadbury’s World on Tuesday. Mmmm! Chocolate (wipe drool here)

I have a dirty little secret

It’s time to make a confession. It’s time to admit to something that no self-respecting Londoner should admit to.

It’s time to come out in the open and say the unmentionable.

I quite like Birmingham

There, done it.

Birmingham is quite often the butt of jokes.

Yes, it’s not the world’s most stunningly attractive cities, a lot of the architecture is very badly dated and some bits are a bit shabby (see for example the Palisades shopping centre above New Street Station).

Yes, the local accent doesn’t have the beauty and charm of a Morningside or a Welsh Valleys, but it could be a lot worse (and I include my foul South London accent in with that group)

Yes, it’s a pain to get to from quite a large number of places. It’s the hub of both the Cross-Country rail network and the motorway network, making it the hub of the UK’s delays and conjestion

Yes, it’s not an historic city like York or Liverpool, having still been a sleepy market town up until the Industrial Revolution

But for some reason that I can’t quite work out, I quite like it.

I like the compact city centre and the friendly atmosphere.

I like the way that it unashameably tries to compare itself to locations well out of its league (“We’ve got more Canals than Venice, we’re Britain Venice” being one of the main culprits)

But most of all I like the fact that the city centre feels much safer than most other city centres I’ve been in.

I’m sure that when you get out of the city centre there are areas which you don’t want to be wandering around, but you get those in most places, however there isn’t a feel of that actually in the heart of Birmingham. Wandering around New Street feels so much safer than walking down Oxford Street in London (and that’s before you include the fact that Oxford Street still has traffic running up and down it.)

So, there, I’ve admitted it, I’ve outed myself as a Brumophile.