WHEN WALKING

Birmingham to Hereford: Stage 1

Pineapple Road to Bromsgrove: 22km

So after three days staying with Cath and Graeme in Birmingham, doing very little, as requested, I continue my journey from Birmingham, heading towards Hereford, via Worcester and the Birmingham and Worcester Canal.

First stage a cheat stage to Bromsgrove. I have many pointless rules about cheating, which I can go into another time, but this particular cheat is the double-back. I’ll come back on the train to Birmingham at the end of the day tomorrow start off where I left off. It seems silly not to spend the evening at Pineapple Road, when it’s just a few stops away.

So I set off on my own along the canal, going through Kings Norton, which I know, out through Hawkesley on the edge of the city, which even Cath and Graeme don’t even know.

There’s a lot of green in Hawkesley already. It’s the sort of place that, with a little love, could be a good place to live. There are a couple of old lock cottages marooned by a grass verge at the edge of the estate where the tunnel goes underneath. The walk goes through urban meadows, past ventilation shafts covered in ivy, and round the back of houses along horse path lane, before the tunnel finally emerges again on the other side of Wast Hill.

It always seems to be the same: when the tunnel comes out the other end, you enter a different country, and it’s Worcestershire this time.

The canal is very quiet at first, but slowly canal boats appear and it starts to feel like a canal community again. Not as much as on the Grand Union or the Stratford branch, but the boats are there, people chugging around.

One boat chugs past as I sit on the bank to eat my sandwich and I get up and walk so I can have the sound of it accompany me before the canal disappears into the next tunnel and I set off over the hills again. I will see him once more when I rejoin the canal, reentering the tunnel from the other side. I know enough of canal speed restrictions by now to realise he must be a 4mph underground speed freak.

The towpath at this point is closed off officially, but I climb along it, clambering over roots and going round pipes. It’s safe enough now, but it’s a long drop to the canal. The canal here feels carved into the hills, a more remote but bigger feat of engineering. I wonder if it ever earnt its keep before the trains came.

As I approach the Tardebigge locks the towpath is back on the level and easy again.

Three runners join the path from a neighbouring field, and their voices are beautifully familiar. I am suddenly back in my grandparents house in Wednesfield, Wolverhampton, my aunties greeting my mum with hoots of “Hello Marg!” and mum’s voice losing any adopted southern tones. Even this, I realise, is a throwback to something else. I’m hearing Margaret, Janet and Fiona, the young women and their baby sister, before they moved on to have families of their own, before mum left the Midlands for good.

And that’s why when I come to the Midlands, when I hear people from the Midlands, it feels like home, or at least it feels like Mum.

So, I walk across the fields into Bromsgrove, ready to get the train home to Birmingham.