Robert Hampton

So, London then.

I was there over the weekend of 16-18 March at the invitation of likeable Finchley-dweller Ian Jones, who zeroed in on an idle Tweet of mine like a ninja. On the first day of my week off work, I found myself on a Virgin train down to the Smoke.

Disaster struck early in the trip, as the Northern Line through Finchley was closed for engineering works. So, to actually get to Ian’s home, I faced the prospect of a rail replacement bus from Golders Green. First problem was actually finding where the bus stopped – Golders Green station has a row of bus stops right outside the station entrance, but of course the Tube replacement service didn’t stop there. No, you had to turn right out of the station, walk along a footpath, cross a road and board the bus at a temporary stop underneath a railway bridge. MAKES SENSE.

The line was, in fact, closed so London Underground could test the new Northern Line signalling system. Excitingly, for much of the weekend we could see a constant procession of test trains from Ian’s kitchen (which looks out onto the railway line). Less exciting was the fact that they went at about 5 mph and kept stopping and starting. Clearly all is not well with the new computers yet.

Undeterred by the lack of trains, we set out to explore some of the capital’s transport delights. Ian, in case you didn’t know, is the author of the excellent 150 great things about the Underground blog, and was keen to show me some of his favourite places. I will freely admit that a good proportion of the weekend was spent wallowing in our mutual transport geekiness.

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So, a couple of weeks ago I was in Birmingham.

It was a destination chosen mainly for practical reasons. I was meeting with my friends Scott and Ian for a day of high-jinks. Ian lives in London, Scott lives in Birkenhead. Birmingham was roughly in the middle, and London Midland‘s Great Escape offer enabled us to reach there for just £15.

Aside from Moor Street station (which everybody spent a lot of time coo-ing over), my companions complained about how rubbish everything was. In fairness, we did seem to see only the very worst of the city: the dank caverns that are New Street and Snow Hill stations; the horrendous, pedestrian-unfriendly gridlocked roads that surround said stations; the Midland Metro with its unrelenting window views of derelict factories. We ended up in Wolverhampton, where a drunk man shouted obscenities at the people disembarking from the tram.

Birmingham gets a bad press. It’s the UK’s second city, with over a million inhabitants, and yet it is sneered at. It’s unfairly portrayed as a concrete mess of ugly 60s architecture, populated by Black Country simpletons with rubbish accents.

I can’t join in with the Birmingham mockery, however. This is mainly because I live in Liverpool, which is probably the one English city which gets more of a slating than Birmingham. I live and breathe Liverpool every day, and I know that the image of thieving and yobbery is untrue and unfair (except, perhaps, when the Mathew Street Festival is on). By the same token, I refuse to believe the stereotype that Birmingham is all concrete and ugliness. Over a million people choose to live there – it must be doing something right.

Instead, I will point you to my Birmingham blog from 2011 and supplement it by saying that Equator Bar is a fun place to while away an hour or so while waiting for your train.

The tram system is a bit rubbish, though.