Monopoly

My other half was working in South Birmingham so I cadged a lift to Walker's Heath (appropriate or what?).

I planned on walking to the city centre which would be mainly along the Pershore Road.

First job of the day was to walk the few residential roads adjacent to my drop off. Strangely, the Birmingham boundary (shown blue on the map) doesn't follow any feature but goes straight down bisecting some of the roads. This results is next door neighbours, one in Brum and the other in Droitwich.

The boundary usually follows some prominent feature, be it a river, field boundary or road. Often the line runs down the middle of a road so that I have to make sure that I walk on the correct side !

With Chelworth done, I proceeded North, along Broad Meadow and Lifford Lanes before reaching Pershore Road where it crosses the Birmingham and Worcester Canal.

About a mile along the A441, I came across the 'new' King Kong, above a carpet shop.

The original Birmingham King Kong stood in the centre of Birmingham for a few months in 1972.

Kong, a 18 foot tall fibreglass statue, was on loan to the city but the council declined the offer to buy it and it was sold to a local car dealer for £3,000. After being used to advertise car dealers around Birmingham it was shipped off to Edinburgh and was last seen, recumbent, in Penrith.

Just past the (new) King Kong the Pershore Road splits for a short one-way section near to Stirchley Public Baths which opened in 1910.

Going along the right hand side of the split (Pershore Road) I turned off to walk Hazelwell Lane but was confronted with this..

Apparently, this is the site of the new Stirchley United football ground. I may need to come back to Hazelwell Lane to walk the rest of the road, once the roadworks have finished.

Coming back on my self on the other side of the split (Hazelwell Street) and passing the baths, I came across three roads which will be familiar to anyone who has played Monopoly.

At first, I thought that they were named after the Hasbro board game but looking at the architecture, especially the date of 1900 over the one time Bournville Market, it would appear that these roads were just named after the prominent shopping areas of that there London.

I bet a house here would cost more than £200 though !

After a stroll around 'London' it was a fairly straightforward stroll along Pershore Road grabbing a few of the many cul-de-sacs along the way.