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| *Travel Tips>>>Birmingham Travel Tips |
When you hear someone speak of "Smethwick" in the West Midlands, what imediately comes to your mind? |
Travel Info Smethwick is an industrial suburb of Birmingham in the vicinity of West Bromwich. Travel Tips I got lost there once when I was pretty drunk. We were at a West Bromwich match, and I got seperated from my group. I was pretty loaded and got on the wrong train. I finally gotr back to downtown B'ham and our hotel but I'm sorry to say I found it to be an extremely dirty, scary place. I've never been more terrified waiting for a train in my entire life. Lots of soot belching factories, blackened old terraced houses, and a downright depressing aura all about the place. It reminded me of one of those ugly planned industrial towns in Eastern Europe. There weren't a whole hell of a lot of white people floating around there either. Christ, I still have nighmares about winding up in that slum that drunken afternoon! Others I was born in Leicester but grew up in Smethwick from the age of 3 months until I went away to university (forty years ago), so for me it's home! It's where I had family, played, went to Boys' Brigade and Church, went to school, learnt to smoke (and stop) and so I had many good friends and experiences there - lots of memories. Not the prettiest place in the world but a long way from being the worst (I've been to some of them) - just take a walk round Warley Woods on a sunny Autumn day. I feel quite safe walking around it's multicultural streets. Walk along the canals and see many signs of the industrial revolution: Telford's Galton bridge, Brindley's canals and pumping houses. See the first houses in the world to be lit by gas just inside the Avery's site which is also the site of Watt's Soho Foundry. I meet many people who originally came from Smethwick and, although we wouldn't dream of living there again, it is still special to us. I hope it can arise from the ashes of it's industrial heritage and become properous again, and even attractive! The 1964 General Election when Patrick Gordon-Walker (then the Shadow Foreign Secretary) contrived to sensationally lose the Smethwick seat, thus denying him a seat in Harold Wilson's first Cabinet. (Incidentally, the MP for Leyton was elevated to the Lords to give Gordon-Walker a safe seat. He lost that by-election as well!) . Well, you did ask what first came to mind !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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