Today I had fun exploring the minor specialist bus routes of Birmingham. This was not a planned activity – it just kinda worked out that way.

I’m currently working at the Land Rover factory in Solihull. I don’t usually name the places I’m working at but given the size of this place to say “car factory” and “Solihull” and expect to remain obscure is pointless. This place is huge, about the size of a small town. Imagine the largest urban industrial site you can think of and triple it. This is bigger. And other than that I’m slightly reticent to talk about it. They have a quite aggressive no-photos policy there so I don’t think they’d take too kindly to me rambling on about how the production line works online. So instead I’m going to talk about my bus journey.

To get there I usually take the number 57 which winds it’s slow way up through Small Heath and along the Coventry Road. This morning, however, a bus was sitting at the stop in Moor Street with the number 850 on the front. I’ve not seen a bus numbered in the 800s before and other that being as curious as you can be about a strange bus at 6.45am having had only four hours sleep, I just assumed it wasn’t for me. Then I noticed the destination, which of course I can’t exactly remember now, but it was definitely “Works something“. There are many strange place-names in Birmingham (Nechells, Washwood, Gilbertstone, Queslett, Tat Ban and the quite fruity Walmley Ash, to picks some at random from the A-Z) but nowhere called Works. Could it be a special service timetabled to coincide with the starting of a new shift at the Land Rover factory, rather like those extra busses that don’t run in school holidays? It could indeed, and so I got on it (with some trepidation as the driver was visibly very tired and might have been just saying yes to get me out his hair before driving me to some other Works on the opposite side of town). The funny thing is, there were only four people on the bus. It took exactly the same route as the 57 only it stopped at the factory gates which are about a mile from the terminus of the 57, so I’m guessing a 57 had just departed taking everyone else on it. On the plus side it was a really old bus which meant it had radical things like leg room and relatively comfortable seats. I shall try and catch it tomorrow if only to find out what the destination is called.

The end of the day is always a challenge as you try and figure out where you are in relation to the entrance. Since the plant is basically a mile long stretch of huge anonymous grey warehouses (the largest half a mile long) surrounded by loads of roads that twist and weave, getting your bearings is kinda impossible and the last two times I’d been there it’d taken me a good 20 minutes to get off site. Today I got a lift from a co-worker, a genial chatty bloke, who dropped me and another co-worker off at the entrance. On the wrong side of the plant. A mile away from the bus stop. As the crow flies (remember the windy roads).

However, all was not lost. We spotted a bus stop and tried our luck, which appeared to be in. Here was another Works-specific terminus for the somewhat randomly numbered A6 service. This one is a bit more regular, running mornings and afternoons from the plant to Solihull then on to Kings Heath and was, again, a really old bus. It wound a long route through the housing estates around the plant before suddenly appearing in Solihull town centre which I’d forgotten was so close. Two more busses and I was home in a little over two hours. I do try to limit my working in Solihull as much as possible.

I’ve been thinking about basically ripping off Diamond Geezer and taking a ordinary but odd bus journey somewhere in Birmingham and this could be the perfect filter through which to do it…