High And Lonesome

LETJOG PEAK No 5: Turner’s Hill, West Midlands (271 metres)

Walk Date: Tuesday 28 March 2023

An urban walk on a wet March day might not seem an attractive proposition to many, but I have always relished getting around the country and appreciating the variety that we enjoy in our built environment. I have been fortunate in my career as a surveyor to visit just about all of England’s major centres, and over the years I have done a lot of work on commercial properties in Birmingham and across the West Midlands. So it has been a fine experience having a little more time today to explore the city and some parts of its surroundings that are new to me.

My route today, in the dark blue line, from Birmingham New Street station in the city centre (bottom right) out north-westwards along the Birmingham Canal, and eventually to Turner’s Hill (by the ‘white’ area to the left) and on to Rowley Regis for my train back to New Street

Laurence Broderick’s two-metre high bronze sculpture outside the Bull Ring shopping mall in the city centre

Joining the Birmingham Canal towpath at the back of The Mailbox building – on a sunny day this could be quite a stunning restaurant and bar area on the water!

From the latter part of the 1700s and into the following century Birmingham became the hub of the English canal network. It has been said that the city has more canals than Venice: if that is true then it must be based on mileage rather than on absolute number but, either way, the first ten miles or so of today’s ‘climb’ to the County Top of the West Midlands was actually a straightforward and flat canal-side ramble, with plenty of historical interest at every straight and turn.

I have previously, during my LETJOG trek, walked the Worcester and Birmingham Canal from the south-west into Birmingham city centre, and then out of the city north-eastwards along the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal. Today my walk took me north-west from the centre on the Birmingham Canal, to a point beyond Oldbury. The Canal itself has an interesting history – wide and straight it was designed and constructed by the renowned canal-builder and engineer Thomas Telford, opening in 1829. But that is only half of the story: sixty years previously James Brindley had overseen the completion of one of England’s earliest canals, on a route out of Birmingham that meandered around the 473-foot contour line, hence minimising excavations and the need for the basic canal locks of the day. Somewhat ironically the commercial success of his waterway proved its downfall a few decades later, as investors began to plan a more direct route. Telford was duly commissioned, and his (literally) ground-breaking proposal was to blast through all of the natural obstacles that Brindley had skirted around, taking seven miles off the route.

My path, the dark blue line, out of Birmingham city centre (bottom right) followed Telford’s canal – this thoroughfare cuts off two ‘loops’ of Brindley’s earlier waterway, a feature repeated several times further to the north-west; Telford was also responsible for the Edgbaston Reservoir (bottom left), built to provide a reliable water source for the Canal

Regency Wharf on Gas Street Basin where the Birmingham Canal meets with the Worcester and Birmingham Canal: when the latter was opened in 1795 the navigation authorities insisted upon a physical barrier perpendicular to the two canals, the 84-yard long ‘Worcester Bar’, to prevent water leakage from the Birmingham Canal (but meaning that cargo had to be manhandled laboriously between boats on either side)

A typical view of Telford’s canal – long, straight, and easy to walk!

. . . and one of Telford’s fine bridges, near Smethwick

Just one moving narrowboat all day on this quiet waterway!

After leaving the city centre, and as the path became a little wilder and the Victorian warehouses gave way to twentieth-century industrial buildings, to infill housing, and eventually to greenery, the pigeons of the city were replaced by songbirds and water birds; mallards, moorhens, coots and herons. It is strange indeed to experience such a pleasant and seemingly almost natural environment running through the heart of such a large conurbation, and over these few miles I had the towpath entirely to myself and passed not a soul along the canal. Now for the climb to the West Midlands summit!

At last the ‘County Top’ of Turner’s Hill comes into view . . .

. . . closer now, after quite a climb, from the public footpath across Dudley Golf Course

And this is almost as close as one can get to the top, having been fenced off from the peak: you may know the masts from driving up the M5 Motorway (they are to the west approaching the M6 junction)

The views south and westwards extend to the Shropshire Hills, and here, in the far distance, to the Malvern Hills (all climbs for another day)!

Back to my start point in Birmingham via a commuter train from Rowley Regis – Grand Central, the shopping centre over New Street Station

My walk today, after an initial exploration of the city centre and a couple of diversions for closed towpaths and footpaths, took me just over five hours and covered 14 miles and 287 metres of cumulative ascent. Experiencing such solitude along an urban canal, and also upon Turner’s Hill where even the golfers were deterred by the conditions, was quite unexpected. All in all today proved to be an unusual and most memorable day out!

Cherry-pickers watching over my path near West Bromwich

‘High and Lonesome’ is the title of a track from ‘Raise The Roof’, the second collaborative album by West Midlands born singer-songwriter Robert Plant and US bluegrass/country singer Alison Krauss. Released in 2021 the album enjoyed critical and commercial success for the duo, and I was lucky enough to see them perform together last summer in Hyde Park. Plant, who hails from West Bromwich and was raised in Halesowen, rose to fame as the front man for Led Zeppelin, and he has since had a varied career of solo and collaborative work: he co-wrote ‘High And Lonesome’ (with Joseph ‘T Bone’ Burnett, formerly a guitarist with Bob Dylan’s band) and this seems an apt title for my latest LETJOG Peaks escapade.

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