Birmingham
Birmingham. The UK's second city. It's actually where James comes from, and luckily he has managed to remove his curious Brummie accent, which I think is the strangest regional accent in England. Yes, even worse than the Geordie accent.
James's parents still live in Birmingham, so we went to see them and to tell them a bit about our trip so far. It was nice to tell people a bit about it, so far we had only really spoken about it to each other, to my mum on the phone and to the world via social media.
We spent the first day visiting the Severn railway. Now if you know anything about the railways in England, then you'll probably heard of the most hated man, Dr Beeching. In the sixties, he proposed massive cuts to the rail network, and over a third of our railways were shut down or mothballed. Whether that was right or not, is debatable, but a side effect of that is that the UK has some of the worlds best heritage railways. Parts of the Severn railway were closed in the sixties, but it has been reopened by volunteers, and now stretches all the way from Bridgenorth to Kiddeminster, and provides an awesome day out for everyone. When we were there, it was a beautiful warm day, full of sun and blue sky's. The locomotives are all well looked after, and there are frequent train running the entire network throuhout the day.
Bridgenorth is a quintessential middle England town. The building below is the remains of the castle, blown up in the English civil war, and the pictures either side are the funky topiary bushes in the park. It's also got a beautiful little high street, which hosted a small market while we were there, and also a rickety funicular railway, to save you having to climb up a thousand stairs to reach the main street from the railway station.
All the signs say not to stick your head out of the window, but I couldn't help myself!
It was a really enjoyable day, and our final full day on our road trip. Tomorrow we were heading home, and I don't think either of us really wanted to.
James's parents still live in Birmingham, so we went to see them and to tell them a bit about our trip so far. It was nice to tell people a bit about it, so far we had only really spoken about it to each other, to my mum on the phone and to the world via social media.
We spent the first day visiting the Severn railway. Now if you know anything about the railways in England, then you'll probably heard of the most hated man, Dr Beeching. In the sixties, he proposed massive cuts to the rail network, and over a third of our railways were shut down or mothballed. Whether that was right or not, is debatable, but a side effect of that is that the UK has some of the worlds best heritage railways. Parts of the Severn railway were closed in the sixties, but it has been reopened by volunteers, and now stretches all the way from Bridgenorth to Kiddeminster, and provides an awesome day out for everyone. When we were there, it was a beautiful warm day, full of sun and blue sky's. The locomotives are all well looked after, and there are frequent train running the entire network throuhout the day.
It was a really enjoyable day, and our final full day on our road trip. Tomorrow we were heading home, and I don't think either of us really wanted to.
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