Exploring Birmingham: The Districts Worth Walking, and Why

Birmingham rewards walking more than its reputation suggests, and the reason is a piece of geography instead of anything the city did on purpose.

Its centre is little more than a mile across inside the A4540 ring road, so the districts, and most of the city-centre attractions in them, string into a single walk.

The canals do the rest. Because the place grew on a plateau with no navigable river, it built a network instead, and the towpaths that remain give a level route free of traffic between quarters that look separated by main roads whenever you happen to glance down at a street map.

Roughly twenty minutes north-west on foot, or a short ride on the tram from Grand Central.

Streets of three-storey brick workshops with large upper windows, built so that precious metal could be worked by daylight rather than with any thought of impressing whoever happened to pass in the street below.

The thing that makes it worth the walk is that the trade has not left.

A district still working for a living wears differently from a preserved one, and the museum in the middle of it is a workshop that simply stopped being used in 1981 and was then kept exactly as it stood.

Fifteen minutes south-east from New Street, or less from Moor Street. The Custard Factory occupies a former Bird's custard works and the warehouses around it hold studios, independent shops and street food, with murals accumulating on the brickwork as the film production that has arrived in the area continues to expand.

Digbeth is the district that rewards curiosity about the present in place of the past.

It is visibly mid-change, which makes it more interesting to walk now than it will be once the work around Curzon Street settles, and it is considerably less tidy than the centre proper for the same reason.

Eight minutes south takes you to Hurst Street, the Hippodrome, the Chinese Quarter and the Arcadian courtyard, with the Bull Ring markets passed on the way. This is the densest concentration of places to eat in the city and it is also the shortest walk of any district covered on this page.

Westward instead, Centenary Square leads to the Library of Birmingham, whose rooftop garden gives the best free view of the centre, and on to Brindleyplace and the canal basin.

That sequence is about twelve minutes and takes in most of the city's best civic architecture along the way as it goes.

Bournville is the most unusual thing within easy reach, a model village the Cadbury family laid out around their factory for the workforce and not for display, about fifteen minutes south by train. Cadbury World is on the same site, which is what makes the trip out there work for families as well.

The Balti Triangle, spread through Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Moseley along the Ladypool Road, is the other journey worth making, though it is a short taxi or bus ride in place of a walk. Edgbaston, south-west, holds the cricket ground and the Victorian botanical gardens with their four Victorian glasshouses and fifteen acres.