I didn’t spot the canal from my car. Arriving at my hotel after dusk, I had no clue until morning that I had slept beside the soothing waters of England’s Venice.
My Premier Inn, like most buildings in this part of Birmingham, kept its gates to the canal locked. Eventually, I found a portal and stepped off the street into another realm.
The jackhammers and traffic of morning rush hour were abruptly rendered irrelevant, even while they continued somewhere above this lower ground-floor level of the city.
I strolled along the towpath of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, a tranquil line of dark water. As the traffic din faded, all I could hear was a rattling magpie and the trickle of water seeping through a lock gate.
There were no walkers on the path and no narrowboats on the water. Two pigeons duelled on the brick-weave path, jumping up and down, beside enigmatic piles of rubbish. A gutted binbag spilled out hospital scrubs. What was the story here?
Graffiti was etched like colourful tattoos on the sturdy arm of every lock and buddleia thrust out of old bridges.
Just beyond a particularly comely bridge of little curves, I turned south on to a larger canal, which turned out to be the Digbeth Branch Canal. This stretch of waterside was also shunned by a procession of factories and offices, from Unite to Big Yellow Self-Storage.
Even newer converted wharfs from the 1990s or noughties refused to open up to the water.
A new Aston University building did finally create public space beside the canal, and reedbeds had been added to the water, which shone darkly but was unexpectedly clear.
The towpath turned cramped at Ashted, a long, cool cave-like tunnel studded with small stalactites on its brick ceiling. I hunched my way along its narrow path with a low wooden fence between me and the water, grateful that no one was coming towards me. It was a relief when wintery sky reappeared.
At Glasswater Locks, I finally encountered a scene familiar from the last three decades in London: fancy waterside flats under construction.
Further along, there was some more familiar canal water: a fetid corner swirling with leaves, crisp packets and broken shards of polystyrene. Brum’s version of the great Pacific garbage patch.
A discarded pallet lay on the path. Then, unexpectedly: plop! A fish jumped up through the rubbish.
I continued through another larger tunnel formed by the railway into Curzon Street, with a new HS2 bridge soaring high overhead. This time, a person approached from the other direction, against the light. They could see me; I could make out only their silhouette.
They passed. Then I heard footsteps behind me. I hurried and, phew, reached daylight again, and a big bank of sallow, silver birch and bracken. I glanced back. There was no one where the footsteps had been.
I turned left on to another section of canal, wide and straight, the silver sheen of Birmingham’s regenerated Bullring sparkling in the distance.
Here, closer to the city centre, there was more gentrification: one beautifully repurposed warehouse and a cubist fox and rat trio in graffiti commissioned by the Canal & River Trust, which has made these canals walkable, as well as navigable.
I turned for home when the canal crossed the little River Rea far below us. It again flowed miraculously clear. The only sign of pollution were enormous dog turds on the path.
Retracing my steps back to the hotel, I diverted to scan some old streets near Digbeth: wide, almost car-free, industrial roads; old warehouses adorned with graffiti. I wasn’t used to finding city roads not busy with cars or industrial buildings not yet turned into flats.
There was mess but also exciting openness and possibility, which I’d never expected to find in a big, busy city.
I set out from what3words vines.drips.looks, turned south onto Digbeth Branch Canal, continuing until the River Rea (what3words: rated.goals.snail), before retracing my steps for a two-hour stroll
