I am writing a book about walking across West Midlands county, from Claybrookes Marsh on the eastern edge of Coventry, to Moseley Old Hall on the north western fringe of Wolverhampton.
Along the way, thanks to many people who are generously lending me their time and their stories, readers will meet some of the people, places, and projects that make the West Midlands one of the UK’s most virbant and exciting counties.
Why Write A Book About Walking Across West Midlands County
In the first part of 2024 I am embarking upon a project which I will walk across West Midlands county. Along the way I will meet and speak with all manner of interesting people and organisations doing exciting things in communities across the seven metropolitan boroughs that comprise the county.
From this material I am writing a book. A book which will be a guide to a walk, comfortably doable in around three days, across West Midlands county. While also serving as a subjective portrait of the county, its people and communities, in the mid-2020s. Readers of the book will gain insight into an often overlooked but fascinating part of the UK. Something I hope will be illuminating and entertaining in equal measure for West Midlands residents, visitors to the county, and those for whom it might be largely unknown territory, alike.
What Makes West Midlands County Distinctive
Viewed on a map West Midlands county appears as an organ shaped splodge. It is home to three million people arrayed across three cities, dozens of towns, and innumerable villages in the heart of western English Midlands.
Despite being the second most populous county in England (after Greater London if that counts) the West Midlands is one of the smallest counties by area. It was created only in 1974, forged from big slices of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire, though the area had in the main been highly urbanised since at least the 19th Century. This shared history is one of the things which unites the county’s disparate parts.
For good reason most surveys and accounts of West Midlands county focus upon its diversity. People from all across the world have made their home here, making it one of the most varied and vibrant parts of the UK, with a distinctive, firmly rooted, multicultural culture. And it is also geographically and spatially diverse. From the surprisingly tall hills in the county’s southwest which mark the boundary between the Severn and Trent watersheds, through the urban upland of the Birmingham plateau, and a cornucopia of little waterways – both dug by humans and natural – that run capillary like across the landscape, to the verdant urban fringes, West Midlands’ small geographical area, is topographically and geologically diverse, too. There is also a rich array of histories. Coventry has a proud past as one of the great cities of medieval England, radical politics and pioneering modernity. Birmingham’s place at the heart of both West Midlands and England means that it has always been amongst the first to demonstrate wider trends, as in the single word that provides the city’s motto marching relentlessly “forwards”. While in the Black Country the felicitous juxtaposition of an unusual geology, with very particular patterns of land ownerships and administrative divisions, has given rise to a very unique and distinctive economic and social history.
My walk, and the book stemming from it, will tease out all of these stories and more, showing both the clear connections and the striking differences between the places and spaces that comprise West Midlands county.
Come for the Walk Stay for the Stories
As well as a how-to guide, and a record of my particular journey across the county where I have lived the majority of my life, this book will be knitted together by stories. Stories, tales and snatches of conversation with conservationists, artists, arts administrators, museum managers, local government officers, community activists, craftspeople and academics, to name just a few. A small ensemble of just some of the three million people who make West Midlands county their home. But a rich slice of life which will illustrate the creativity, energy and resourcefulness that has always characterised the people that make the West Midlands their home.
The book will tell their tales and share their projects and achievements as well as just being another book where a man goes for a walk. In doing so it will be a celebration of the West Midlands, a county which I feel despite its centrally to England if often passed through or passed over, with even many long-term inhabitants (me included in the past) only ever scratching the surface.
Steps Being Undertaken
I am currently in the process of research and developing a route, as well as conducting interviews with people doing exciting things along the way.
Some of the route will be shared in February’s Walk Midlands Newsletter which will have a West Midlands county theme. All new walks published next month will be part of the route I am taking across the county. My intention is to keep to the usual Walk Midlands publishing cycle of one new day-walk somewhere in the Midlands region, doable without a car, created and published each week. The newsletter will also continue to go out monthly, though I will, because it is quite time consuming, look to rework the events section so that it is shorter and more focused upon a smaller number of “highlights” across the region.
My hope is to have completed most of the research required for the project by partway through the spring with a view to having a first draft together as soon as possible after that, and a published book in due course. I am excited for you being able to discover the journey and everything and everybody along the way in due course.