My mouse started to die over the weekend which, given that it was quite an old mouse that prior to my excessive usage had been used in an office-type environment, wasn’t too surprising but still rather annoying, so I popped into town to get a replacement. I decided to cycle in and, thanks to the shockingly useful Sustrans online cycle route map, took Route 5 of the National Cycle Network into town. It looked pretty good on the map, following the river Rea through Cannon Hill Park and then nipping through some back streets into the heart of the city.
And it started off so well – I felt I was in the countryside – until I realised it was a Bank Holiday Monday at the start of Half Term. One forgets these things when one doesn’t have a proper job. There was a massive “fun” fair in the park slap bang on the cycle path and people having “fun” can be so obstinate. And then, having passed by the flat in Balsall Heath I used to live in circa 1998, I discovered that the Pride festival that had so wonderfully enlivened our regular drinking haunt on Saturday night was still going on with Hurst St closed off and reasonably full of revelers and incredibly loud sound systems. But I refused to get off my bike. This is an official cycle route, dammit, and I will cycle along it.
All that paled into insignificance when confronted by the Bull Ring shopping “experience”. I’ve managed to avoid actually going into it until now but Apple had to put their lovely new boutique in there didn’t they. I was puzzling over why young people feel obliged to hang about in shopping centres of all places but then as a teenager I could always be found in the Whitgift centre of Croydon every Saturday afternoon.
And then home again. I can’t give an accurate time due to my figuring it out for the first time and excessive pedestrian interference, but it’s a certainly a more pleasant journey than the A34 from Perry Barr. Next I’ll be trying the canal paths – Dr Andy says there’s an interesting feature a few miles south – and I might even remember to take my camera this time.
The bull ring, I hear, is a dire piece of architecture – though I’ve not seen it myself. I’m curious to know why it is so called – do you know?
a straw poll offers up these few dubitables – site of ancient roman stadium, site of old agricultural auction house, site resembles a cow’s arse.
anyhow…good on ya for biking it into town and saving a piece of the environ. (I hope you disposed of the dead mouse thoughtfully).
I quite like the look of the new Bull Ring, at least from the outside, and it does open up sections of Birmingham that were previously blocked off from each other with an almost piazza-like feel. Inside it’s just another shopping centre with all the ambient noise and tedium that entails, but, and this is crucial, you don’t have to through it to get anywhere, unlike certain other shopping centres I could mention.
I also like the audacity of the Selfridges building. My friend Steve reckons that in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse survivors (wearing tunics, of course) will scale the building and rip the disks of to use as shields in their retro-feudal warlord society. For that mental image alone the building is worth it.
According to this: “In the 16th century a man called John Cooper was given the right to bait bulls at a site opposite St Martins Church, this became known as the Bull Ring.” So London baited bears on the south bank while Birmingham had bulls. I wonder which one is the more hardcore…
Yea, well some of us had fun you big miserable loser.
Probably would have been easier if you’d dived down the side of the Nature Centre and pedalled along the Pershore Road instead. Did you actually manage to cycle up Hurst Street? It was completely jammed on Saturday night, and I was turned back by the sheer fabulousness of it. It is a good route though, because you can follow it up to Victoria Square and across the city centre. The milepost marked on the map next to the National Trust symbol is right outside the Old Fox.
By all means have fun. Just don’t do it on a DESIGNATED CYCLE ROUTE. At least Hurst St was officially closed off. Cannon Hill Park was like suddenly cycling into a sea of goo with no warning.
Pride wasn’t so hectic on Monday, truth be told, though it did feel like cycling through a night club in places. To be honest I didn’t mind, unlike the bloody fun fair…
You seem to have managed to successfully negotiate three rather narsty cycle route blockages. The green Canon Hill park route is regularly blocked, often by huge metal barriers and ‘security’, when there’s an ‘event’ on. The Hurst St cycle lane is regularly cut off by parked cars, and cycling is banned in the Bull Ring, even the open area from the market up to the bottom of New St. I’ve been stopped twice by burly jobsworths. So you really have done pretty well, considering.
THe route through Cannon Hill is a designated cycle route, yes, but, irritating as it may have been, it’s not exclusively for the use of cyclists. It’s one of those pavements that you can cycle on arrangements, and thus liable to be legitimately obstructed by sunday strollers, toddlers, dogs, slower cyclists, geese, funfairs, old people not pay attention, youths in hoodies and so on and so on.
Do feel free to lay into parked cars on Hurst Street though. They shouldn’t be parked on the cycle lane there, so wail away with your u-lock and dispense a few dents :)
(I do wonder who thought it was a good idea to run a cycle route against the flow of a one way street though. Always find that more than a bit alarming.)
christ! local historian Carl Chinn MBE’s vizog flashing up on my screen was more hardcore than any confrontation with bull or bear. still, that cleared that up – I suppose it could have been the old bullring I was referring to. :-/
it’s a close call but I think the bear would be a more exotic spectacle – bulls are, and would have been, a bit passé® Interestingly, the advised defensive action when confronted with either a bear or bull is the same – play dead. works with a rhinoceros too, I believe. now that would be hardcore!
I think it’s probably some clue to my attitude towards computers and the net at the moment that I had to re-read the first line of this entry a couple of times, in order to get out of my head the idea that this was a real mouse – i.e. a pet mouse – which began to die over the weekend, and all because you’d ‘used it excessively’, you cruel and heartless swine.
Don’t worry, I’m over this moment now.
Vaughan – on proof-reading (it wasn’t intentional) I was secretly hoping someone would read it that way, so thanks.
More to the point, although a little OT, why is the entire area around New Street station either pedestrianised or one way roads?
As someone trying to cycle in and out of the city centre everyday it drives me crackers!
Without using the pavements (which I would never do.. ;-) I get forced into doing battle with buses and taxis down Corporation Street to get to the station via the palasaides (sp?), although leaving it is easier thanks to the tunnel opposite the main station entrance.
Anybody got any other ideas for navigating around the city? For info, I’m trying to get to/from the Birm’ & Fazeley canal, towards salford junction and then Erdington..