Rail Run #91: from Witton

It was a cold morning and Jackie had an appointment in Olton so I rode with her as far as Bull Street then parted ways as she headed south and I to the northeast a few miles, arriving in Witton a little before 10am. More people departed here than I expected there being no game on in Aston Villa that Saturday and all the local shops shit and the pubs closed but you can never predict what attracts people.

Granted, most of them looked like Mormons on mission or Jehovah’s Witnesses just out to fuck with people minding their own business in their own homes but my mission was to run home before Jackie could get back by public transport.

I was surprised how easy it was to find new paths not just with regard to the Rail Run List (now down to 9 stations) but also overall. I’ve never passed through Handsworth Park before, for instance, a big church fronting it on the eastern ramparts. A good run, overall, with about 90% new-to-the-project and about 70% truly virgin territory.

Rail Run #90: from Acocks Green

In post op, the attending surgeon and nurses gave me instructions on how to care for the wounds…keep the bandages dry, paracetamol for the pain, etc, etc. (It was two more BCC excisions, both on my left forearm). Yeah, yeah, I thought, but I still had time to slip in a rail run to work before the day had slipped away. I arrived at Acocks Green just past 11.

The Great Western is right next to the station and I stopped in to take care of some work emails then headed down the road, picking up a cod and chips for lunch along the way. It was a struggle to cover new roads for the map but, despite the overcast cold and windy weather I made it in before the local anaesthetic wore off.

The low hanging fruit of the Rail Run List is now mostly gone (10 to go). There’s a couple of reasonably easy possibilities from or to home or work but most of the Coventry Line is going to wait until Summer when I can traverse the verge-free lanes in pre-dawn sunlight:

Rail Run #89: to Shirley

The Rail Run List continues to dwindle (11 to go) as I covered canals and inhospitable suburbs to tick off Shirley Station. Still dealing with a week long bout of the flu I sweated more than normal but also, due to half the route on the dead flat canal paths, pushed my pace a little harder than I have in the last 6 months…barely beating the setting sun.

Rail Run #88: to Yardley Wood

The Rail Run List will linger a while (although there are now only 12 to go). Yardley Wood is one of the last of the low hanging fruit in this project and some of the longer remaining station runs are going to take some planning AND training before tackling them.

There were some nice features to this run, still. The impermanence of humanity was writ large on the southbound platform by tree trunk encroachment (above) that must have started decades ago.

I also managed to slide into two pubs (The Horseshoe and DJ Quinn’s) and still made the train I planned to catch if I had only done one of them.

Rail Run #87: to Perry Barr

It was a brisk morning with a glorious sunrise when I left the house to tick Perry Barr off the Rail Run List (thirteen to go). While covering new streets to this project I felt that I had already traversed this path before, perhaps in the opposite direction.

Arriving at the station 30 seconds too late for my planned train into work, I decided to kill the half hour until the next one over breakfast and a pint at the adjacent Arthur Robertson (a Wetherspoons I covered previously). They have slashed the prices on the traditional breakfast of a sausage, two rashers of bacon, an egg, toast, two hash brown patties, and baked beans so with the beer I was only £5.20 out of pocket…result!

Rail Run #86: to Spring Road

The dash to beat the setting sun also got me to Spring Road, another stop on the Rail Run List, early enough to stop at The Lady Winchester for a pint before heading back to catch my train. Fourteen to go.

I spotted some loud, local girls moving down the opposite walk way and setting up camp in the waiting shelter there. Everyone of them was speaking on different subjects and all at the same time. One of their phones chimed and the group went quiet so I heard this:

“We’re all at Spring Road.” Pause. “Spring Road Rail Station.” Pause. “No, we’re not getting on a train. You need to get your ass down here.” And, then they all started yelling at each other again. City kids are cool.

Rail Run #85: to Snow Hill

I took the opportunity afforded by an afternoon free (to go to a cancer screening and surgery follow-up) to tick off another entrant — Snow Hill — on the Rail Run List. Fifteen to go.

I tried to time a lunch kebab at Chaps Pizza with its opening time although I was a bit late due to overestimation of my speed and underestimation of the sights to see along the way. First up was some blatantly pre-laid Hash House Harrier trail (above). This was spotted 30 hours before their scheduled run from the Hop Garden in Harborne, just around the corner (tsk).

Around the next corner, I spotted this industrial leather strapped mesh bra draped around a sign post. I wish this had been near the dead badger a few days earlier — I would have dressed the carcass.

This industrial building still had a roof and the promise of repurposing for the new development called Port Loop. I always suspected the developers wanted to shitcan this site to build anew, and they have almost certainly achieved planning permission by allowing it to decay in the weather. Capitalism.

The Summerfield Community Centre was a striking note on the skyline as I approached the Winson Green prison site (a little ways from my hospital visit). After my all clear on the old cuts and my scheduling of a biopsy on some new ones, I made my way to the Red Lion and a traipse through the Jewellery Quarter which is absolutely awesome and deserves a visit all its own.

Rail Run #84: from Gravelly Hill

Instinctively, I pronounce it GRAVE-ley Hill but it is supposed to be GRAVEL-ly Hill (as in like gravel). Regardless, the Rail Run List continues to dwindle. Sixteen to go.

This part of Brum is interesting to me, all industrial decay and abandonment. And, apparently, something that scrambles the GPS signal. I stopped for the photo, above, at Salford Circus and my tracker erratically jumped back here a couple of times when I stopped at the Manor Tavern and again, later, at the Ocean Fish Bar. Weird, but I reconstructed the map using another online GPS tool so all is good:

Rail Run #83: to Moor Street

Saturday morning I was up ahead of the spouse and decided to run to the City to pick up some things at the Bull Ring Markets and tick Moor Street Station off the Rail Run List. Seventeen now remain.

Sticking as much as practical to never-before-seen streets (or, if that was onerous, to ones new to this project) I was reminded of the passage of time (“like sands through the hourglass so are the days of our lives” as MacDonald Carey would say).

The days of this badger’s life ended sometime this week. At first I thought it was a racoon but I remembered those aren’t really a thing, here. This would have been an especially huge one, even without the bloating.

Rail Run #82: to Hall Green

After a busy day at work, I slipped away in the setting sun to do another Rail Run, to Hall Green this time. Eighteen to go.

Once I cleared the King’s Heath shopping area it was all suburban wealthy neighbourhoods until I crossed the rail bridge just before the station. Managed to get a pub stop in, too, but mostly it was one of those introspective runs you look forward to. Very pleasant.