I should really have realised that villages around Birmingham weren’t necessary grimy slums of decaying houses! The problem is that my entire experience of Birmingham is on the train. You arrive at roof height, gazing across over-run gardens to wiggling roads of 50s semis in various states of disrepair. There will always be one with almost no tiles of the roofs, normally next door to a pristinely rejuvenated, stained glass adorned, piece of architectural history complete with traditional English garden (straight with 4 foot shrub lined borders along each side, the further end containing a rusty climbing frame and swing). Then suddenly the train starts to plummet downwards (normally along side a corrugated warehouse with several levels of dust-frosted glass windows) into the bowels of the earth and you travel for several minutes through a brick-lined canyon littered with broken bottles and squashed coke cans until the walls start to be plastered with badly fitting plastic tiles and the train pulls into Birmingham New Street Station.

I have never really found out where New Street actually is because if you try and leave the station you are funnelled into a decaying shopping centre with such modern stores as Wimpy and ??, which seems to endlessly double back on its self and removes any hope you might have of escape. If you do eventually find a sticky automatic door, you just find yourself on an elevated pavement above a growly road full of kerb-crawling taxis. You are treated to an assortment of independent travel agencies and paper shops that are reminiscent of out of town shopping strips along arterial roads.

So I was somewhat pleased to see that Birmingham without had trees and flowers and sky. I travelled down there by train on Friday night to visit Rachel who is living on a narrow boat that her and Gordon are doing up on the Grand Union canal. We walked through the local village of Knowle, and I would have never guessed that we were so close to the belching roads of Birmingham. Commuter-ville it definitely is, with large mansion style houses stretched along the main road in copious grounds, but its is also perched on the edge of a gentle hill that draws your eye down and along the canal into the countryside. Unfortunately, although I was able to forget about Birmingham, Birmingham has definitely not forgotten about Knowle. The village has its standard two brewery pubs – standard beers, no exciting ales, but pleasant beer gardens and wooden pews. But in the centre of the village the yuppies have moved in with a designer pub – delicate pastel decoration, carefully choreographed seating and a selection of over-priced, badly stored (I imagine – how judgemental is that!) beers! Its all rather disappointing. But they are obviously welcomed, if the rabble of drunk try-hards in the over heated beer garden were anything to go by.

The next morning I woke up early (the sun streaming through the windows and the sound of ducks and water lapping meant that it was a bit like the first night camping, where the sun draws you out of bed to enjoy the day), and went for a wander down the towpath. It was almost raining, in that there were raindrops making giant circular ripples on the canal, but I wasn’t getting wet. The ducks were merrily nibbling invisible weed off the pilings and the fish were yumphing tiny mozzies landing on the canal’s surface. The path was pretty much deserted except for the occasional runner (most of whom seemed slightly taken aback by my friendly “morning!”) and a woman in a towelling robe leaning out of one of the boats watching the world go by. By the pub a fat man and his two teenage sons were trying to cast off using the help of passers-by who were requested to push the stern off the bank. Unfortunately, the helmsman was then pushing the bow back onshore and the boat hit the pilings with several almighty thuds. Eventually they were adrift, only to try and moor up again 50 yards down the canal by the pub. They tried this by reverse parking – no mean feat on a stern propelled boat! I left them retracing their steps over and over again as they reversed in, their bow swung out, and they motored forward to correct it.

Later in that day we went for a wander in the car to find somewhere nice to have a walk and eat lunch. We had vaguely thought of going to a national trust property with good grounds, but when we saw a brown sign pointing to Hay Woods, we figured we ought to go explore. And I’m glad we did. Its not that Hay woods is (are?) particularly exciting, its just that it was accessible in the way that so many UK national parks aren’t. There was a little car park surrounded by trees and picnic benches so you could actually have a picnic easily. And then there was paths that had been vaguely maintained so that you didn’t feel like you were stamping on some rare flower. It felt like on of the American national parks where there has been an effort to make the land accessible without stamping all over it. So many places in England are just a concrete car park in the middle of amazing scenery, but as the car park seems to have no respect for the surroundings, neither do the visitors. It only takes a little thought to put some bins there and make blend in a little with the surroundings so that they are not just a wheely bin leaning against a tree. I love the forestry commission!