If walks down hidden paths are your thing, there’s a lovely little stroll along the River Rea you can access from the Grand Union Canal.
The path
Go onto the Digbeth Branch Canal via the Fazeley Street entrance, cross the first bridge and then turn right down the Grand Union Canal (walking towards the back of The Bond).
Bluebells and bees
Just before the towpath goes over the River Rea you’ll see you can get onto a footpath on your left that takes you along a small section of the river. (A Google Map of the route to the entrance point is here.) Be careful along the edge – the drop down to the river is incredibly steep!
Anyone know what these flowers are?
At the moment there is a lovely array of wild flowers growing there, from daisies to bluebells, and the bees seem to be having fun collecting their pollen.
Leafy green!
There’s also some great old trees and green hideaways to enjoy. Have fun!
This is my last one of these. And I’ve saved my favourite thing until last. Now I have a great affinity with the River Rea, that runs right the way through Digbeth. So much so that with John Mostyn, Adam Crossley and a few others I attempted a walk from the source (in Rubery) to confluence (in Gravelly Hill).
Unfortunately our unfit legs and failure to walk past a pub without stopping for a pint meant we only made it as far as Digbeth, where it resembles a drain more than a river. Director of Planning Clive Dutton promised to ‘give Birmingham a river’, Moses-style, but as yet this hasn’t happened and shows no sign of doing so before he moves down to London. So Birmingham’s river is largely hidden after it hits Highgate.
Belfast also has a hidden river, the River Farset, which busts through the city’s floor in jets for teenagers to play in.
It also has a much more visible one in the shape of the River Lagan. Me and Karen Strunks got a lovely sunshine boat trip along this courtesy of a Titanic Boat Tour, seeing Belfast’s boat-building heritage in all its glory. It was here we met Alan, who invited us to his home, a boat called The Confiance for the evening – where ‘culture is our cargo’.
It’s the fantastic Homeplace Project set up by the Lagan Legacy – they’ve bought an old Dutch barge to Belfast and are transforming it into organisational headquarters, a floating gallery and creative space for Belfast’s city centre on The Waterfront.
As a platform for current and future Lagan Legacy projects it seemed logical to equip the vessel, not just as offices, but as a venue to cater for as many types of projects as were likely to be included within the aims of the organisation. Hence, the Lagan Legacy Board decided to create a venue which would house a digital maritime heritage gallery and an extremely versatile and multifunctional Arts performance space with the potential to support a whole range of cultural events and programmes… Music, Theatre, Cinema, Art Exhibitions, Workshops and Conference and Seminar facilities.
Meanwhile, as work on developing this gets underway, lucky caretaker Alan gets to live on it.
Spending the evening on a boat, watching the river light up as darkness descended and drinking 45% whisky, was a lovely high-note to our weekend, made all the better for me by getting to drive a highly historic tug-boat at 4am. I’ve never driven a boat before – navigating a path between the foundations of bridges was a little hairy but I did fine and went to bed as the sun was rising feeling a little proud, not least because we worked out I was probably the first woman to have gotten behind the wheel of the 85 year-old vessel.
So, because it gave me a night to remember, I’m afraid the River Lagan wins it for Belfast. Yes, I know we have beautiful waterways with more canals and Venice, with their cute old barges and narrow boats. But we don’t have boats that look more like spaceships.
A Tasmanian designer obsessed with Star Trek designed the Enterprise, Voyager and Discovery vessels, the last of which is above. Lagan Legacy Director Derek Booker took great pleasure in telling us the man at the helm of the Voyager is a Mr Kirk. Yes, that’s right. Captain Kirk, who, upon entering any harbour has to say over the radio, “Captain Kirk requesting permission to enter.” You can imagine the responses.
We also don’t tend to have hot sailor-boys like this one:
Birmingham did have one cute man who lived on a boat in Birmingham in the shape of writer Steve Coxon, but artist Melinda Schwakhofer went and enticed him down to Devon like a siren after her special Digbeth holiday here. And they’ve gone and created a love-nest lifestyle for themselves down south.
So that’s where I’m off to this weekend, to see Melinda and Steve in his new habitat, and find out what he does and doesn’t miss about his old stomping ground of Digbeth.
Oh yes. You’ve had #brumvsbelfast. Now it’s time for #digbethvsdevon.
When I mentioned to Pete that for a while I’ve been wanting to don some waders and explore the River Rea, he told me that Silent UK have already gone and done it. Their verdict: is not so grate achully. So maybe I won’t go risking Viles disease just yet.
