So I did it. In the end I changed pretty much everything about my plans which, even after refining them and doing lots of maths, turned out to be too adventurous. In the end I cycled (not enough busses to get off and 70 times) and stopped taking non-TTV photos of the surrounding area at City Road. The recording of ambient audio was immediately abandoned as being not that interesting actually.

Which left me with the TTV photos which are in this Flickr set and I’ve also turned them into a movie with soundtrack by Woodbine.

And that, normally, would be that but I’ve been a little unwell since completing the journey (I think I picked up a mild virus a few days back as I’ve been a irritatingly lethargic and headachey) so rather than do thinking word stuff I’ve been messing around with Blurb’s bookmaking software. There will be a book. Here’s the cover and back cover:

It’ll be 80 pages including an essay and will be on sale for around £15 as soon as I write the essay. Which I’ll do as soon as my head clears.

As you should be aware, this Wednesday the 11th of November is the second annual Eleven Bus day on which people are invited to join Jon Bounds for all or part of his 11 hour journey starting at 11am on the Number 11 bus traveling around the Birmingham Outer Circle bus route. I was unable to join in last year but this year my diary is clear and I am ready.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog you might remember my attempt to write a travel guide to the Outer Circle which failed before I’d even got past the sketching stage because I was thinking too big. Thankfully Jon’s given me a framework to reign things in with – I only have 11 hours on one day to produce something. So here’s what I plan to do.

Wikipedia says there are 272 bus stops on the 11 route. This is a little misleading. In fact there are 280 bus stops, 140 pointing one way and 140 pointing the other. I know this because I counted them on the rather excellent Network West Midlands Live Travel Map.

The 11 timetable says there’s a bus every 10+ minutes during the day and every 20 minutes after 6pm. If start at 11am this gives me 82 busses to play with. I may start earlier though for light reasons.

I’d like to use this opportunity to study the bus stops themselves but in fitting 140 into one day is impossible and some of them are so close that getting the bus from one to another would be a little absurd. (Yes, I intend to do this project by bus. No walking.) So I got my trusty old A-Z map, last seen in 2006 when I was trying to figure out the Outer Circle, and stuck alternating colours where each stop is:

You’ll notice there’s a fair bit of bunching which seems to correspond to the density of population, which makes sense. And many of the stops sit in pairs, such as here in Handsworth:

So skipping every other stop wouldn’t be too much of a problem. And, it occured to me, next year I can go the other way stopping at the stops I missed the year.

The plan, then, is to travel around the Outer Circle by bus only (no walking) visiting every other bus stop along the route. I will spend at least 10 minutes at each stop where I will do the following:

• Take one TTV photo of the bus stop. This will be a portrait showing how it sits in its environment.
• Standing at the bus stop, take at least 6 (normal) photographs of interesting things visible from it.
• Record one minute of ambient audio.
• Make any notes that occur to me while waiting for the next bus.
• Photograph the next bus as it approaches

Since this is a predominantly photographic project, available light will be an issue. I’d rather not take a tripod but it might be necessary for the final stretch. To minimise this I’m planning on starting at 7.30am, 15 minutes after sunrise, when there should be enough light.

Seventy bus stops (remember, I’m getting off at every other stop) with a bus coming every 10 minutes will take 11h40m to complete. I’m assuming that the rush hour will provide me with more busses speeding things up at bit but even so I’ll need to complete the project by 4pm, giving me 8h30m or seven minutes per stop. It’s potentially doable but I still have to take the tripod just in case.

And now I’m thinking maybe I’ll just start at 11am anyway which will get me to Perry Barr around sunset so that half the circle is in light and half in dark. That’d be interesting.

Let me think about that for a bit.

Anyway, once I’ve done this I have a few ideas on how to present it. Obviously everything’s going online but it’d be nice to do some kind of exhibition. How one goes about such things when one isn’t a Capital-A-Artist, I have no idea.

If you’ve got a couple of free hours on Wednesday to join Jon on the 11 bus please do. It promises to be a most illuminating experience. All the details you need are on the Eleven Bus site.