A 10 mile hike through Sutton Coldfield

This happened last Tuesday, but so did something else so I wrote about that instead. Even so, it’s worth recording.

I was woken up as per usual by Anna at the agency with a job. I don’t seem to be getting many medium term jobs at the moment, either because there aren’t any or because they’ve noticed I tend to leave them after a month, but financial restraints apart I don’t mind the random nature of it all. This job was quite urgent as the guys who were supposed to go hadn’t turned up. Warning bell number one. It was quite a way away so she’d come and pick me and another temp up and drive there. Warning bell number two. The pay is £6 an hour. Ah well, sod the warning bells!

So we’re driving there and I’m following on my A-Z as we’re going to have to make our way back. We’re assured there’s a bus which leaves at 6.30pm taking up into town, which sounds okay. We join the motorway (warning bell number three) and wind up in an industrial estate in Hams Hill on the opposite side of the M42 [map] and off the A-Z. We are strictly speaking no longer in Birmingham.

The job turns out to be kinda fun. It’s a massive warehouse distributing dog and cat food to supermarkets and cash-and-cary outlets and my job is to drive an electric pump truck around picking up cases of produce, shrink-wrapping them and dropping them off in the correct place. Wizzing around at 10mph on a machine which steers unlike anything else around tight bends and using advanced mental geometry analysis is quite a buzz. Come six o’clock it’s time to go home so we ask where the bus stop is. Of course everyone else there drives in so they’re unsure but someone’s seen folk waiting for a bus and directs us to that spot. 10 minutes later we’re at a bus stop but it’s not labled with the usual bus company. A bus comes by at 6.10 but it’s not going into the city centre. I ask the driver if the other company uses this bus and he reckons they do. 6.30 comes and goes and we begin to suspect that we’re at the wrong stop.

My fellow temp, Garfield (yes, really) is getting pissed off that we’ve been abandoned in the middle of nowhere and I’m understanding this but it’s not helping. I remember someone saying something about a Sainsbury’s superstore being at the other end of the estate and mention this to him but I’m coming around to the idea of just walking home. Whatever happens it’s going to take hours to get out of this place. The busses that come through here will have stopped running and getting a taxi is going to cost a fortune and take a long time to get here. And if we go via the NEC we’re talking three busses at least. Walking home should only take two or three hours and I’ve spent most of the day not walking. Garfield is horrified at the notion of walking and finds a phone number for a minicab company based in Perry Barr, down the road from me. But he doesn’t have any credit on his phone. So I’m expected to make the call.

Of course the taxi guy balks at sending a driver to the other side of the M42 to pick up two guys stranded at a bus stop. He gives me another number, who balks equally. And another. And another. Eventually I’m given a premium rate number that expects me to pay a quid for each enquiry and at that stage I stop. This isn’t going to work and I’m wasting time if I want to get home at a reasonably decent hour. I convince Garfield that the Sainsbury’s will have a customer phone for calling a taxi and set off walking.

If you’ve got a standard A-Z of Birmingham to hand I’m traveling from page 89 H2 and heading towards page 68 A2. I guessed this was about 10 miles and checking now with a piece of string it turns out I was right. Ten miles. That’s doable. So off I go.

The first thing that struck me is the grass verges of non-suburban roads outside cities are not designed for walking on. As I waded through rivers of leaves, teetered along sections that would be just wide enough if not for the encroaching bushes and edged along bridges I felt I was struggling against something. This is vehicle land. if cities are a compromise between pedestrians and drivers here the drivers have won. Of course there’s no reason for a lone human to be walking along the feeder roads to one of the busiest motorway networks in the country, unless he’s been abandoned in the middle of an industrial estate by his employment agency.

Soon I made it out of motorway land and approached the village of Curdworth [map] in the pitch dark. Suddenly the pathway would vanish and I’d have to cross the road to find one again. The village itself was stunningly nondescript, as you’d imagine somewhere on the cusp of being amalgamated into the sprawl of the second city being, but at least it was civilisation which was a start.

Exiting Curdworth I started to feel a little tired. Not being dressed ideally for a long walk I did at least have my Magnum boots on (if I’d been wearing my steel-toecapped boots like I was supposed to it would have been hell) but the leather jacket was getting heavy and sweaty despite the cold early evening air. I checked the map and decided I would stop for a break once I’d passed the sewage works at Minworth [map] which was a good plan as I passed my first shop just before it and got hold of a bottle of water and a chocolate bar. Treating this like a mountain hike I just nibbled on the chocolate to prevent stitch and make it last. Maybe I was being melodramatic, I dunno, but having just completed one double page spread of the A-Z and entering a state of knackeredness the prospect of the next two was somewhat daunting without a drip-fed sugar rush.

I now found myself entering the edges of Sutton Coldfield. Sutton is not a bad place – when I went to hospital there a few months back it was a generally positive experience – but it doesn’t make for a particularly interesting hike. Looking at the map I figure I can split the journey into four chunks taking little breaks inbetween and this works well, allowing me to keep my head down and let my mind wander without getting lost. Obviously I’m thinking about how I’m going to write about John Peel when I get back so fi you thought that piece was considered and thought through, unlike my usual blurtings, this is why.

So far the journey has been reasonably flat but as I start marching along Chester Road [map] it goes downhill. Not a good sign as any walker / cyclist knows, what goes down inevitably goes up soon after. And up it goes. As I get to New Oscott [map] I’m somewhat eurphoric to be nearly home – only a mile to go – but utterly knackered. Doing this after a days work if taking its toll. I’m sweaty and am getting that dragged feeling in my face. I’m also aware that I’m on a road where the bus will take me the right way. So far I’d been crossing the paths of busses leading into Sutton or away to strange places in the North-West Midlands. This bus, the 451, is notoriously infrequent but I keep looking over my shoulder. Then, as I’m passing a bus stop, I see one in the distance. I’ve only got another 15 minutes of walking until I’m home and this will only deal with ten of them, but I relent and pay my 70p for a short hop.

And then I’m home [map], two and a half hours later, which means I was walking at 4mph. I pretty sure trying to get busses and taxies would have taken twice as long and cost a decent chunk of my £6ph and while I felt like poo the next day (thankfully the agency didn’t call) at least I had some decent blog-fodder under my belt.

What”s interesting, though, is that had this been a walk through the countryside it would have been a breeze. Maybe it being the concluding part of a working day had something to do with it, I dunno. Anyway, should you ever find yourself needing to walk from Hams Hill industrial estate to Kingstanding Circle here’s the best route: Faraday Avenue – Hams Lane – Marsh Lane (over M42), Coleshill Road (through Curdworth) – Kingsbury Road (A4097) – Walmley Ash Road – Penns Lane – Chester Road – Kings Road. It’s actually quite simple and reasonably direct for a cross-suburban route.