The 65th Birthday Party (2)

One of my (many) aunts was sixty five this year and they decided to hold a big party, both to celebrate that and also her survival from the big C which which was diagnosed half a decade ago. The party was held at her golf club on the northern edge of Birmingham. The family were all invited and, having looked at the train options, this looked like a good way to all a couple of days to my total so I went along.

Getting to Birmingham from here is straightforward enough. Having taken a train from Waterbeach up to Ely you can pick up the CrossCountry Stanstead Airport to Birmingham New Street train.

I've used the CrossCountry train a few times before. The plus side is that it goes through some lovely countryside, especially around Melton Mowbray and Rutland. The down side is that it's a two coach train and they only run one an hour so in my experience it's always packed, especially from Stanstead as far as Peterborough and then again as you start to get close to Birmingham. Some people usually end up standing. One has to wonder why CrossCountry haven't added either more trains (it seems a very under-used route) or more coaches to the trains they have.

Anyway we got safely to Birmingham. New Street station is a pretty dire place: all the platforms are below ground level with a concourse over it and a shopping mall above that with offices on top of that. Apparently it used to have a lovely roof but that was destroyed in the Blitz and the sixties did the rest of the damage. Wikipedia has an article which includes a section on its history and a photo. That article also notes that

it is frequently derided as one of the most run down and unwelcoming of all the major stations on the British railway network.

Yup, can't argue with that. So I escaped from there pausing briefly to look up at the Rotunda, another Birmingham landmark from the 1960s, although one now rather better thought of than New Street.

The Rotunda with the end of New Street below it

I wandered through the town centre and did some shopping, picking up a nice ultra lightweight fleece from Cotswold Outdoor¹ and lunch from a shop in a little arcade which I ate on a bench in the grounds on St Philip's Cathedral.

Apparently it's English Baroque and dates from the early 1700s. Not really to my taste I have to say but the grounds were nice and seemed to be a popular breathing space for people in the heart of the city.

So then it was on to my hotel which I did via a short commuter train hop to Tame Bridge Parkway. From there I could walk the 2.5 miles to the hotel via part of the Beacon Way long distance path. That first took me along the Tame Valley Canal where my dad used to fish with his dad when he was a nipper.

Tame Valley Canal

Then for a short way up the Rushall Canal before turning east along a poorly way marked footpath which brought me out on the A34 by way of Aston University's sports grounds.

After checking in at the hotel I continued along the Beacon Way for another couple of miles to Barr Beacon which is somewhere Dad had often spoken about when we were children but where I'd never been.

Barr Beacon is just a hill. At 745ft (227m) it's nothing special height wise but what makes it is its location overlooking the plain on which Birmingham lies. Sadly this view is now marred by power lines so this photo was taken from just below the summit under the cables.

If you want to see how it really looks from the top there's a photo in the album for this trip which shows you what it's like. There's also another photo there which reveals another sad truth: the photo above is "photoshopped" - I've removed a ghastly Asda store from the foreground. Compare this photo with the next one.

Anyway it was a good afternoon out, if a tad overly warm. It was overcast and very sticky and I drank lots of water, including a bottle I took with me on my walk.

The evening at the birthday do was pretty uneventful. Nice to see my immediate family and we had a good gossip and ate lots of food which we sat on the golf club patio and hoped it wouldn't rain. It didn't.

At the party during the speeches

We wandered off at about 10:30pm as the kids needed to go to bed, as did I. Not that this did me a lot of food as I was woken with the mother of all migraines at 4pm which a cocktail of all the drugs I'd brought with me didn't really subdue for ages so I didn't get to sleep again until near 6am.

It was therefore a rather bleary eyed and still headachy and below par Paul who wended his way home on Sunday.

1. No link as a punishment for having such a dire Flash riddled web site!