Birmingham
If anywhere can be described as the first purely industrial conurbation, it has to be BIRMINGHAM. Unlike the more specialist industrial towns that grew up across the north and the Midlands, “Brum” – and its “Brummies” – turned its hand to every kind of manufacturing, gaining the epithet “the city of 1001 trades”. It was here also that the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution – James Watt, Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) – formed the Lunar Society, an extraordinary melting-pot of scientific and industrial ideas. They conceived the world’s first purpose-built factory, invented gas lighting and pioneered both the distillation of oxygen and the mass production of the steam engine. Thus, a modest Midlands market town mushroomed into the nation’s economic dynamo with the population to match: in 1841 there were 180,000 inhabitants; just fifty years later that number had trebled.
Britain’s second-largest city, with a population of over one million, Birmingham has long outgrown the squalor and misery of its boom years and today its industrial supremacy is recalled – but only recalled – by a crop of recycled buildings, from warehouses to an old custard factory, and an extensive network of canals. With a revamped city centre, and a vibrant cultural life, Birmingham also boasts a thoroughly multiracial population – this is one of Britain’s most cosmopolitan cities. Nevertheless, there’s no pretending that Birmingham is packed with interesting sights – it isn’t – but, along with its first-rate restaurant scene and nightlife, it’s well worth at least a couple of days.
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Birmingham orientation
Many visitors get their first taste of central Birmingham at New Street Station, whose unreconstructed ugliness – piles of modern concrete – makes a dispiriting start, though there are plans afoot to give the place a thoroughgoing face-lift. Things soon improve if you cut up east from the station to the newly developed Bull Ring, once a 1960s eyesore, but now a gleaming new shopping mall distinguished by the startling design of its leading store, Selfridges. Head west along pedestrianized New Street from here and it’s a brief stroll to the elegantly revamped Victoria Square and the adjacent Chamberlain Square, where pride of place goes to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the city’s finest museum, complete with a stunning collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. Beyond, further west still, is the glossy International Convention Centre, from where it’s another short hop to the Gas Street Basin, the prettiest part of the city’s serpentine canal system. Close by is canalside Brindleyplace, a smart, brick-and-glass complex sprinkled with slick cafés and bars and holding the enterprising Ikon Gallery of contemporary art. From Brindleyplace, it’s a short walk southeast to The Mailbox, the immaculately rehabilitated former postal sorting office with yet more chic bars and restaurants, or you can head north along the old towpath of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal as far as Newhall Street. The latter is within easy walking distance of the Georgian St Philip’s Cathedral.
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Herefordshire
Over the Malvern Hills from Worcestershire, the rolling agricultural landscapes of Herefordshire have an easy-going charm, but the finest scenery hereabouts is along the banks of the River Wye, which wriggles and worms its way across the county. Plonked in the middle of Herefordshire on the Wye is the county town, Hereford, a sleepy, rather old-fashioned place whose proudest possession, the cathedral’s remarkable Mappa Mundi map, was almost flogged off in a round of ecclesiastical budget cuts back in the 1980s. Beyond Hereford, the southeast corner of the county has one especially attractive town, Ross-on-Wye, a genial little place with a picturesque setting that also serves as a convenient gateway to one of the wilder portions of the Wye River Valley, around Symonds Yat, where canoeists gather in their droves.
Hereford
The low-key county town of HEREFORD was long a border garrison town held against the Welsh, its military importance guaranteed by its strategic position beside the River Wye. Today, with the fortifications that once girdled the city all but vanished, it’s the cathedral – and its extraordinary medieval Mappa Mundi – that catches the attention, lying just to the north of the river and at the heart of the city centre, whose compact tangle of narrow streets and squares is clumsily boxed in by the ring road. Taken as a whole, Hereford makes for a pleasant overnight stay, especially as it possesses a particularly fine hotel.
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Hereford Cathedral
Hereford Cathedral is a curious building, an uncomfortable amalgamation of styles, with bits and pieces added to the eleventh-century original by a string of bishops and culminating in an extensive – and not especially sympathetic – Victorian refit. From the outside, the sandstone tower is the dominant feature, constructed in the early fourteenth century to eclipse the Norman western tower, which subsequently collapsed under its own weight in 1786. The crashing masonry mauled the nave and its replacement lacks the grandeur of most other English cathedrals, though the forceful symmetries of the long rank of surviving Norman arches and piers more than hint at what went before. The north transept is, however, a flawless exercise in thirteenth-century taste, its soaring windows a classic example of Early English architecture.
The Mappa Mundi
In the 1980s, the cathedral’s finances were so parlous that a plan was drawn up to sell its most treasured possession, the Mappa Mundi. Luckily, the government and John Paul Getty Jr rode to the rescue, with the oil tycoon stumping up a million pounds to keep the map here and install it in a new building, the New Library, which blends in seamlessly with the older buildings it adjoins at the west end of the cloisters.
The exhibit sets off with a series of interpretative panels explaining the historical background to – and the composition of – the Mappa. Included is a copy of the Mappa in English, which is particularly helpful as the original, which is displayed in a dimly lit room just beyond, is in Latin. Measuring 64 by 52 inches and dating to about 1300, the Mappa provides an extraordinary insight into medieval society. It is indeed a map (as we know it) in so far as it suggests the general geography of the world – with Asia at the top and Europe and Africa below, to left and right respectively – but it also squeezes in history, mythology and theology.
In the same building as the Mappa Mundi is the Chained Library, a remarkably extensive collection of books and manuscripts dating from the eighth to the eighteenth century. A selection is always open on display.
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Ross-on-Wye
The small market town of ROSS-ON-WYE, nestling above a loop in the river sixteen miles southeast of Hereford, is a relaxed and easy-going place with an artsy/New Age undertow. Ross’s jumble of narrow streets converges on the Market Place, which is shadowed by the seventeenth-century Market House, a sturdy two-storey sandstone structure that sports a medallion bust of a bewigged Charles II. Veer right at the top of the Market Place, then turn left up Church Street to reach Ross’s other noteworthy building, the mostly thirteenth-century St Mary’s Church, whose sturdy stonework culminates in a slender, tapering spire. In front of the church, at the foot of the graveyard, is a plain but rare Plague Cross, commemorating the three hundred or so townsfolk who were buried here by night without coffins during a savage outbreak of the plague in 1637.
The Wye River Valley
Travelling south from Ross along the B4234, it’s just five miles to the sullen sandstone mass of Goodrich Castle, which commands wide views over the hills and woods of the Wye River Valley. The castle’s strategic location guaranteed its importance as a border stronghold from the twelfth century onwards and today the substantial ruins incorporate a Norman keep, a maze of later rooms and passageways and walkable ramparts. The castle stands next to the tiny village of GOODRICH, from where it’s around a mile and half southeast along narrow country lanes to the solitary Welsh Bicknor Hostel, which, with the Wye Valley Walk running past the front door, makes a great base (in a no-frills sort of way) for hikers.
From Goodrich, it’s a couple of miles south along narrow country lanes to a fork in the road – veer right for Symonds Yat East, or keep straight for the wriggly road up to the top of Symonds Yat Rock, one of the region’s most celebrated viewpoints, rising high above a wooded, hilly loop in the River Wye. Down below is SYMONDS YAT EAST, a pretty little hamlet that straggles along the east bank of the river. It’s a popular spot and one that offers canoe rental and regular river trips – and there’s a good hotel here too.
The road to the village is a dead end, so you have to double back to regain Goodrich (or Symonds Yat Rock), though you can cross the river to Symonds Yat West by means of a hand-pulled rope ferry, which leaves from outside the Saracen’s Head Inn.
The Malvern Hills
One of the more prosperous parts of the West Midlands, The Malverns is the generic name for a string of towns and villages stretched along the eastern lower slopes of the Malvern Hills, which rise spectacularly out of the flatlands a few miles to the southwest of Worcester. About nine miles from north to south – between the A44 and the M50 – and never more than five miles wide, the hills straddle the Worcestershire–Herefordshire boundary. Of ancient granite rock, they are punctuated by over twenty summits, mostly around 1000ft high, and in between lie innumerable dips and hollows. It’s easy, if energetic, walking country, with great views, and there’s an excellent network of hiking trails, most of which can be completed in a day or half-day with Great Malvern being the obvious base.
Great Malvern
Of all the towns in the Malverns, it’s GREAT MALVERN that grabs the attention, its pocket-sized centre clambering up the hillside with the crags of North Hill beckoning beyond. The grand but often rather faded old houses, which congregate on and around the top of the main drag, Church Street, mostly date from Great Malvern’s nineteenth-century heyday as a spa town when the local spring waters drew the Victorians here by the train load. You can still sample the waters today, but the town’s principal sight is its splendid Priory Church, close to the top of Church Street. The Benedictines built one of their abbeys here at Great Malvern and, although Henry VIII closed the place down in 1538, the elaborate decoration witnesses the priory’s former wealth. Inside, the Norman nave sweeps down to the chancel, which came later, a fine example of Perpendicular Gothic, its sinuous tracery serving to frame a simply fabulous set of late medieval stained-glass windows.
Taking the Great Malvern waters
The gushing Malvhina spring in the mini-park at the top of Church Street is the obvious and certainly the most convenient way to taste Great Malvern’s waters. There’s also a spring at St Ann’s Well Café, a sweet little café in an attractive Georgian building a steep 25-minute walk up the wooded hillside from town; the signposted path begins beside the Mount Pleasant Hotel, on Belle Vue Terrace, just to the left (south) of the top of Church Street.
Hiking the Malvern Hills
Great Malvern tourist office sells hiking maps and issues half a dozen free Trail Guide leaflets, which describe circular routes up to and along the hills that rise behind the town. The shortest trail is just one and a half miles, the longest four. One of the most appealing is the 2.5-mile hoof up to the top – and back – of North Hill (1307ft), from where there are panoramic views over the surrounding countryside; this hike also takes in St Ann’s Well Café, where you can taste the local spring water.
The Peak District
In 1951, the hills and dales of the Peak District, at the southern tip of the Pennine range, became Britain’s first national park. Wedged between Derby, Manchester and Sheffield, it is effectively the back garden for the fifteen million people who live within an hour’s drive of its boundaries, though somehow it accommodates the huge influx with minimum fuss.
Landscapes in the Peak District come in two forms. The brooding high moorland tops of Dark Peak, to the east of Manchester, take their name from the underlying gritstone, known as millstone grit for its former use – a function commemorated in the millstones demarcating the park boundary. Windswept, mist-shrouded and inhospitable, the flat tops of these peaks are nevertheless a firm favourite with walkers on the Pennine Way, which meanders north from the tiny village of Edale to the Scottish border. Altogether more forgiving, the southern limestone hills of the White Peak have been eroded into deep forested dales populated by small stone villages and often threaded by walking trails, some of which follow former rail routes. The limestone is riddled with complex cave systems around Castleton and on the periphery of Buxton, a charming former spa town lying just outside the park’s boundaries and at the end of an industrialized corridor that reaches out from Manchester. Elsewhere, one of the country’s most distinctive manorial piles, Chatsworth House, stands near Bakewell, a town famed locally not just for its cakes but also for its well-dressing, a possibly pagan ritual of thanksgiving for fresh water that takes place in about thirty local villages each summer. The well-dressing season starts in May and continues through to mid-September.
As for a base, Buxton is your best bet by a (fairly) long chalk, though if you’re after hiking and cycling you’ll probably prefer one of the area’s villages – Edale and Castleton will do nicely.
Buxton
BUXTON, twelve miles north of Hartington, is a stylish, good-looking place. Its string of excellent B&Bs make it a perfect base for exploring much of the Peaks, while its handful of splendid festivals has added a real zip to the town. Buxton also has a long history as a spa, beginning with the Romans, who happened upon a spring from which 1500 gallons of pure water gushed every hour at a constant 28°C. Impressed by the recuperative qualities of the water, the Romans came here by the chariot load, setting a trend that was to last hundreds of years. The spa’s hay day came at the end of the eighteenth century with the fifth Duke of Devonshire’s grand design to create a northern answer to Bath or Cheltenham, a plan ultimately thwarted by the climate, but not before some distinguished buildings had been erected. Victorian Buxton may not have had quite the élan of its more southerly rivals but it still flourished, creating the raft of handsome stone houses that edge the town centre today. The town’s thermal baths were closed for lack of custom in 1972, but Buxton hung on to emerge as the most appealing town in the Peaks.
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Buxton festivals
Buxton boasts the outstanding Buxton Festival, which runs for two and a half weeks in July and features a full programme of classical music, opera and literary readings. This has spawned the first-rate Buxton Festival Fringe, also in July, which focuses on contemporary music, theatre and film, but the biggest fiesta is the Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, a three-week affair in August mainly featuring amateur troupes and attracting enthusiastic audiences.
Castleton
The agreeable little village of CASTLETON, ten miles northeast of Buxton, lies on the northern edge of the White Peak, its huddle of old stone cottages ringed by hills and set beside a babbling brook. As a starting point for local walks, the place is hard to beat and hikers regularly prepare for the off in the Market Place, yards from the main drag, just behind the church.
Chatsworth House
Fantastically popular, and certainly one of the finest stately homes in Britain,
Chatsworth House
, just to the east of Bakewell, was built in the seventeenth century by the first Duke of Devonshire. It has been owned by the family ever since and several of them have done a fair bit of tinkering – the sixth duke, for instance, added the north wing in the 1820s – but the end result is remarkably harmonious. The property is seen to best advantage from the B6012, which meanders across the estate to the west of the house, giving a full view of its vast Palladian frontage, whose clean lines are perfectly balanced by the undulating partly wooded
parkland
, which rolls in from the south and west.
Many visitors forego the house altogether, concentrating on the gardens instead – an understandable decision given the predictability of the assorted baubles accumulated by the family over the centuries. Nonetheless, amongst the maze of grandiose rooms and staircases, there are several noteworthy highlights, including the ornate ceilings of the State Apartments and, in the State Bedroom, the four-poster bed in which George II breathed his last. And then there are the paintings. Amongst many, Frans Hals, Tintoretto, Veronese and Van Dyck all have a showing and there’s even a Rembrandt – A Portrait of an Old Man – hanging in the chapel.
Back outside, the gardens are a real treat and owe much to the combined efforts of Capability Brown, who designed them in the 1750s, and Joseph Paxton (designer of London’s Crystal Palace), who had a bash seventy years later. Amongst all sorts of fripperies, there are water fountains, a rock garden, an artificial waterfall, a grotto and a folly as well as a nursery and greenhouses. Afterwards, you can wend your way to the café in the handsomely converted former stables.
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Hiking around Bakewell
Bakewell is a popular starting point for short hikes out into the easy landscapes that make up the town’s surroundings, with one of the most relaxing excursions being a four-mile loop along the banks of the River Wye to the south of the centre. Chatsworth is within easy hiking distance, too – about seven miles there and back – or you could venture out onto one of the best-known hikes in the national park – Monsal Trail, which cuts eight miles north and then west through some of Derbyshire’s finest limestone dales using part of the old Midland Railway line. The trail begins at Coombs viaduct, one mile southeast of Bakewell, and ends at Blackwell Mill Junction, three miles east of Buxton.
The Pennine Way
The 268-mile-long Pennine Way was the country’s first official long-distance footpath, opened in 1965. It stretches north from the boggy plateau of the Peak District’s Kinder Scout, proceeds through the Yorkshire Dales and Teesdale, and then crosses Hadrian’s Wall and the Northumberland National Park, before entering Scotland to fizzle out at the village of Kirk Yetholm. One of the most popular walks in the country, either taken in sections or completed in two to three weeks, depending on your level of fitness and experience, the Pennine Way is a challenge in the best of weather, since it passes through some of the wildest countryside in Britain. You must certainly be properly equipped and able to use a map and compass. The National Trail Guides Pennine Way: South and Pennine Way: North, are essential, though some still prefer to stick to Wainwright’s Pennine Way Companion. Information centres along the route – like the one at Edale village – stock a selection of guides and associated trail leaflets and can offer advice.