The Scott Arms, Great Barr

Pub #2659:

I dashed across the car park of the Scott Arms only as long as it took me to realise I had already missed the bus I was running for. Beer would make up for it, surely.

Inside, I was confronted with the sort of middle-aged suburbanite in skinny jeans who you could probably get a bump off of (despite the ‘zero tolerance to drugs’ signage prominently displayed) but you would have to speak to them first, at least, them afterwards and it just didn’t seem worth the effort.

I watched 8 buses pass in the twenty minutes I languished in this bad sitcom setting. When I finally went to the bus stop, there were no buses for the next 20 minutes but at least I was out of the Scott.

Hamstead and Great Barr

The Badshah Palace is a lovely building and well preserved considering the delicate, 93-year-old brickwork. I reckon that some of it is replaced since I was unable to locate the cut benchmark on it ( and the bolt that constitutes Triangulation Point 18454 is somewhere, inaccessible, on the roof). Here it is in its original glory showing a Jean Harlow film):

It was a drenchingly rainy day but I did manage to find a couple of benchmarks, this one over on the Hamstead side of the canal on Rocky Lane:

It was right at the edge of the pet shop and the offie, shown below, but there were half a dozen others either lost to refurbishments or located on private residences.

The canal crossing, itself, was impressive though.

This was a section of canal I had run back during the lockdowns, well before the Commonwealth Games. Deep in the cut at the time I wondered where this bridge linked neighbourhoods.

That write up is here. It is dull and only there to show the canal furniture but if you want the crossing you’ll find it marked.

Of course, this trip also entailed a pub stop. Having started at the Beaufort Arms near my first unsuccessful search, the damp trek ended at the Towers Inn where the Cut Mark is still visible despite many layers of paint.

The area has built up quite a bit since this photo 75 years ago. As noted elsewhere, some of the customers this day were probably also here then.