Tram... Stop

The naming scheme for the Midland Metro is... opaque.  In the city centre, they seem to favour the street the stop is on, which makes sense because those are some famous (to Brummies) streets.  Bull Street.  Corporation Street.  Then it goes a bit mad.  We'll get to the pure insanity of Grand Central later, but naming the stop Town Hall instead of Victoria Square is strange.  And Library?  Yes, this is where the Library is, fair enough.  But it's also where the convention centre and the Rep and a bunch of other stuff are.  It's on Centenary Square; call it Centenary Square.

Not that, if I'm honest, Centenary Square is much of a draw.  The Wikipedia page for the square details its tortuous history over the past hundred years, where plans for a great civic quarter were constantly thwarted.  Bits of it were built, then something intervened, or some redevelopment was needed, or, unbelievably, a piece of art was burnt down in an arson attack, until we've reached what is currently its final form: a big patch of concrete.

That's, perhaps, unfair.  The square is designed to be the place where the city gathers for events - New Year's, Remembrance Day, and so on.  It's there to be open so you can cram it with Birmingham's citizens.  When there's nobody there, though, like, for example, on a Monday lunchtime, it's very bland.  The interest is solely provided by the buildings around it - the pleasingly modernist Rep, the none-more-80s convention centre, a few newer office buildings, and the Library.

I'm normally a big advocate of modern, ambitious buildings, especially public buildings, especially ones that don't try to blend in or disappear.  But in the Library of Birmingham's case?  I hate it.  I'm sorry.  I think it's ugly.  I think it's basic.  It's some boxes piled up on top of one another.  Why is one of the boxes gold?  It just is.  Why are there are those circles on it?  That's your artistic flourish, mate.  It's simultaneously boring and over fussy; it's trying to be ICONIC but lazily.  It reminded me of the Bling Bling Building on Hanover Street, one of the first pieces of Liverpool 1 to be completed; a perfectly ordinary corner block that got some gold boxes whacked on it to make it "different".

Outside is a circular plaza, cut into the main square and accessed from the library, which is currently home to two ping pong tables.  I'm not entirely sure what it's for.  Is it meant to be a cafe space, or somewhere to hold meetings, or what?  A bit of landscaping might give it a purpose - imagine some trees bursting out above the level of the square - but as it is it seems like an architect's whim.  Bet you in about ten years it'll have been glassed over to form an extra room for the library. 

I went inside and that's where it truly shines, which made me think of Guy de Maupassant eating lunch at the Eiffel Tower every day because it was the only place in Paris he couldn't see it.  The interior of a library is of course the key part; this is what we're here for.  Books everywhere.

(I bet those dangling fairy lights aren't part of the original architect's plan).  It does seem slightly afraid that you might twig it's a library and get bored and run off.  The fiction was the "book browse"; the reference was the "knowledge floor" (isn't every floor of a library the knowledge floor?).  But there were plenty of spaces to sit and research and it was well lit. 

I ended up on the terrace, the sticky-out box at the front of the library, and it was a lovely place to sit.  There were curved benches and landscaping.  It certainly seemed to be a popular place for lunch, as people turned up with their sandwiches and took a seat. 

 

 

I wandered over to the balustrade to take in the view.  The square was beneath me, and then beyond that a mix of vacant lots and big, thrusting buildings.  Birmingham builds at a vast scale; everywhere in the city centre seemed to be a massive development, high or wide or long.  The concept of "infill" seemed alien to them.  Entire blocks were knocked down for new spaces.  And yet... I didn't see many buildings I actually liked.  That one at the back of shot, below, The Cube, is one of the ugliest things I've seen in my life; square, yet with cut outs, and a flared top, and covered in plus signs, and just hideous.  

 

 

I went back down to Centenary Square and through the Convention Centre.  This opened in 1991 and, pleasingly, the central aisle is open for the public to wander through and use it as a shortcut.  At least, I think it is; certainly that's how I used it.  The G8 was held here in the late 90s - that's when Bill Clinton was photographed having a pint - and it's really of its era, all exposed metal ribs and bright colours and marble.  A sign warned me that photography was not permitted but at great personal risk I took this picture anyway.  See you in the gulag.

On the other side was a canal basin, with an actual canal boat going by.  That fact about Birmingham having more miles of canals than Venice is always a technicality to me; yes, it might be literally true, but there are canals and there are canals.  Nobody's singing about Cornettos on these, and instead of 007 shooting around them on a Bondola you've got Cliff Richard and Victoria from Doctor Who on a barge yakking about beefburgers.  The glamour is very much absent.

The area around the basin had been developed into a one-stop shop for getting drunk and eating passable food, with all the favourites - Slug & Lettuce, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Las Iguanas.  Put on a clean shirt and some decent shoes (no trainers) and enjoy.  Beyond was Brindleyplace, a development that's grown since the 90s to be Birmingham's centre for offices and finance.

The bland, corporate inoffensiveness continued.  You wouldn't go out of your way to go to Brindleyplace - not least because it's styled as a single word and not two - but if you worked here or you were passing by you might nip into the Costa or the Pret.  The National Sea Life Centre was wedged in one corner - because when you think "Midlands", you think "ocean life" - and beyond it was an acre of corporate space that looked public but was very much private.  A neat sign warned me for safety reasons, do not enter the water feature, so don't take your kids there for a paddle on a hot day.  Don't loiter or remain or do anything other than consume.

It was all very pleasing to walk round, in the same way that Canary Wharf is pleasing to walk round, but you wouldn't go there if you didn't have to.  It's a spot for commuters to come to and then go home to nicer, livelier, more interesting places.

There was always a bridge here over the canal, but it was blessed with the boring name of Broad Street Bridge.  An enterprising local hoping to drum up tourist trade came up with the idea of renaming it the Black Sabbath Bridge, after the city's most famous musical sons, and a bench with their heads on was installed to commemorate them.  

 

I am unfamiliar with the works of Black Sabbath, beyond Paranoid, so I've had their best of playlist on in the background while I wrote this blog.  My main question is: are those all different songs?  Are they not the same one over and over again?  I wasn't entirely sure when one ended and the next one began.  I'm not a heavy metal person, which puts me at odds with West Midlands' fine musical heritage; I'd have been more excited by a Duran Duran Bridge, or a Mike Skinner Boulevard, or a We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It Plaza.

I descended down some tight narrow steps to the Gas Street Basin, the heart of Birmingham's canal network, and still thronged with boats today.  There was a towpath that took me past some more pubs and bars, and the Mailbox up ahead.  The very first time I'd visited Birmingham had been nearly thirty years ago, when the BF had a friend who lived in the flats near here and we came to visit.  I couldn't remember which block he lived in; I'd never seen it from the canal side.  He was long gone, and the flats by the water that had seemed so glamorous and desirable in the late 90s now looked tired.  The fashionable part of the city had shifted somewhere else and these apartments were left behind.

I doubled back on myself, walking past the city register office and the rehearsal space for the symphony orchestra, and ended up at Brindleyplace tram stop.  I reached into my pocket for my Daytripper ticket and... it was gone.  I checked all my pockets.  Nope, it wasn't there; it must've fallen out when I pulled out my phone or my camera.  Considering how often I'm on trains you'd think I'd have learned to stow my ticket safely by now.  

Grumbling slightly, I went to the app to try and buy a new ticket.  It wouldn't have it.  I got an error message every time I tried to pay and the whole thing hung up.  After three tries I went to the machine on the platform, but again, it didn't want to take my money: the slot refused to let me insert my debit card, and the contactless wouldn't work.  I had to cross to the other platform, the city-bound one, and buy a ticket there.  And, of course, nobody then checked it on any of my subsequent tram trips, so I could've saved myself a few bob.

Behind the tram stop, incidentally, on the front of a closed bar, was a large photomural celebrating the achievements of UB40 (3 UK Number 1s! 17 Top Ten Singles!  100m+ Record Sales!).  Obviously someone was annoyed they'd not got a bridge named after them and decided to remind the locals of their prowess.  UB40 have had one of those acrimonious splits that means there are two versions now touring, and the one depicted here was the version without Ali Campbell and Astro - very much the Bobby Gee Bucks Fizz to the Mike, Cheryl and Jay.  They might legally have the name but we all know which is the real band (although Astro has sadly passed away now).

(Controversial yet brave statement: I think the UB40 version of (I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You is better than the Elvis version, and the fact that it's the theme from Sharon Stone softcore disaster Sliver is the cherry on top).   

The next stop was Five Ways, but I rode the tram beyond that to Edgbaston Village, the end of the line.  The tram was barely full and I didn't want to suffer the judgement of the conductor by going only one stop.  

We got to the stop and he nipped out for a cigarette.  The terminus is barely out of the city centre - you can still see the ring road from it - and there were plans for the tram to go all the way along the A456 to Quinton but, as is usual for British transport projects, those plans failed.  The history of the Midland Metro is of a series of piecemeal, bit at a time extensions; the route through the city centre seems to have been opened one stop at a time, like Transport for West Midlands could only build the next section once they'd found some spare change down the sofa. 

I'd actually been here before, when I did the first section of the tram line; in fact, this blog post about Albrighton and Shifnal was written in the Starbucks next to the stop.  (You can put up a blue plaque if you like, I don't mind).  I'd been in Birmingham for the weekend to watch a showing of Live and Let Die hosted by Madeline Smith - it was, unsurprisingly, transcendent - and the next day I'd had to kill time until my pre-booked trip back to Liverpool.  

(I've stopped listening to Black Sabbath and I've put the Live and Let Die soundtrack on instead.  This is infinitely preferable).

I'd also had a wander round Edgbaston Village and it confirmed my long-held prejudice that anywhere in a city that puts "village" after its name is right up its own rear end.  If you can get a pizza delivered to your door in ten minutes, you do not live in a village, and no amount of preservation orders and conservation areas will change that.  (Exception that proves the rule is on Merseyside, where every settlement is a village, no matter how big or small, except for the city of Liverpool, which is "town".  Don't ask why, just go with it).   

I was back in familiar territory in another way, as I'd previously been to the Hagley Road when I collected Five Ways railway station.  There's a bit of a walk between the station and the tram stop so I again found myself descending into the open space at the centre of the gyratory, traffic swirling around above me, trees and grass around me.  Such a lovely idea.  Such a shame humans ruin it.

The gyros stall was open this time, but the owner was sat on a stool outside, smoking a cigarette.  He smiled at me as I passed and I felt bad for not wanting a slab of greasy lamb at this time of day.  Under the low bridge and onto a patch of land that didn't know what it was - pedestrian plaza, hard shoulder for the busy road, entrance space for the buildings alongside.  There was a statue, but the name was hard to read and I had to look it up when I got home.  It was Sir Claude Auchinleck, who was in charge of the forces in India and Pakistan at the time of partition, so perhaps his name being obscured was deliberate.  That's what we call a "complex legacy".  He had no connection with Birmingham at all, and was simply the chairman of the property company that built an adjoining shopping centre - a shopping centre that was demolished over a decade ago, so I'm not entirely sure why they brought him back.

 

Five Ways was now marked by a large brick box of an entertainment complex: cinema, gym, bars.  Like a retail park dropped into the city.  Its windows advertised lots of exciting times as people drank beers and ate chips and laughed.  Across the road an abandoned language centre had a sign in the window: Jesus = Heaven, No Jesus = Hell.  

I can assure you that my bright red face is purely down to the lighting.  I wasn't about to explode or anything.

Our tram clattered back through the city streets to take me to my final stop, the last uncollected halt on the Midland Metro: Grand Central.  Or, as it should be called, "New Street Station".  Yeah, yeah, corporate interests, private finance, etc etc.  It's not Grand Central.  It's the tram stop for bloody New Street, and nobody will convince the public otherwise.  I'd be very interested to see a survey of how many people call it by that name.  I'll bet the numbers are single figures.

When I rode the Metro back in 2013, I hated it.  It was the worst possible version of a city tram.  I'm pleased to say it's vastly improved since then.  Proper trams, proper stops, a proper route through the city centre that goes places you actually want to go.  The upcoming extensions can only make it better.  I'm quite looking forward to coming back for them.

Holiday Rock

I've been on holiday.  

I had a very relaxing week of doing nothing by the pool in a villa in Arborim, Portugal.  I'd show you the pictures but this blog is boring enough already; you don't need all my snaps as well.  I will share this one of me in Barcelos, however, because I have no idea what this statue is and its hideousness needs to be recorded.

However, I did do a little station spotting while I was out there.  I kept it to a minimum out of respect for the BF, though I should point out that when we were in Porto, he was the one who suggested we ride the trams.  He'll soon be one of us, I promise.

Tamel

This was the closest station to where we were staying and was an archetypal Portuguese station for a small town.

A whitewashed two-storey block with wings either side and tile work around the bottom.  (There was a sign on the building warning against stealing the tiles.  People are awful, aren't they?)  The ticket office seemed permanently closed, though it was early evening so I couldn't be sure.  It did have a working clock, which is always good to see.

The normally single track line here expands to two, with neat concrete shelters on each one and a barrow crossing.  This lead to the only example of multilingual signage on the platform:

The implication being that British people are too thick to know how to cross a railway track without someone giving them instructions.  Fair.  

Tamel also had another feature you don't often get on provincial stations in the UK: a working public toilet.

Admittedly it was little more than a row of urinals with no door or hand washing facilities (and I didn't poke around the ladies', for obvious reasons) but still, well done.

Barcelos

The local large town, Barcelos's station featured a whopping three platforms, and a pleasingly 1930s ambience which had been preserved and scrubbed up.  (Wait, who was in charge of Portugal in the thirties?... oh.)

Note, in particular, the little steam train on the weather vane.  Again, the ticket office was closed, though in this case it seemed to be because of the lateness of the hour rather than a permanent feature.  I peered through the glass and saw a neat little square of tiled floor with benches.  

There were no actual trains, mind; the service through Barcelos is erratic.  As I write this, the next trains are at 10:07, 10:36, 11:09 and 13:15; there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when they show up.

I had a wander round, snapping my pics, ignoring the man on the platform listening to music on his speakerphone.  He was in his sixties, at least, showing that antisocial behaviour crosses all boundaries and age gaps.

 An empty station is a lonely place. 

Nine

Those first two stations I didn't actually take a train to; the BF dropped me off in the car to indulge myself.  When we headed into Porto for a day trip, though, we decided to Park and Ride, and headed for the nearby town of Nine (which I believe is actually pronounced Ninny, but don't quote me on that).  

Nine gets a far better service into the city - you could change here for Barcelos and Tamel, but you might have a wait - so I bought our tickets from the office using my brilliant Portuguese ("Two to Sao Bento please", while holding up two fingers).

Nine also had a cafe, one which, unlike your average British station caff, looked like it served edible food and good coffee and seemed to be a place people came to even if they weren't getting a train.  Why do Europeans get this sort of thing and we have the odd Pumpkin churning out ready packed sandwiches made of grim?  Even their petrol stations have charming little cafes attached where you can get a hot meal, not a Costa machine and a Mars Bar.  (Although I have noticed that a lot of Portuguese people hang around these petrol station snack bars with a lit fag dangling out of their mouth, so while the Brits may be lacking on the culinary front, we win when it comes to health and safety).

There are five platforms at Nine, which sounds like the start of a riddle, and as such it gets a subway under the platforms with white tiles and electronic signs.  You probably don't care about that sort of thing so I won't put up a picture, so here's a picture of a Portuguese train instead.

I don't know what sort of train it is, obviously, but it was relatively ok inside.  There were plenty of seats, though the moquette was a little threadbare, and a couple of the windows had popped and were full of condensation. 

There was a nice map over the doors with the local commuter services though, and you know I love a map.

I confessed to the BF that there was a part of me that wanted to jump off at each station on that map.  He may have rolled his eyes.

Special mention to the accessibility doors which provide space for wheelchairs, prams and surfboards. 

The Porto Metro

We had a lovely wander round the city of Porto.  We'd been to Lisbon once, on a day trip about a decade ago, and didn't like it at all.  We've since agreed that we must've gone to the wrong bit of Lisbon, a sort of grimy area that wasn't its proper heart, because everyone else seems to think it's fantastic.  Certainly Porto was a delight - lots of beautiful streets, a wide river with boats on it, fascinating architecture, and very walkable if you don't mind the odd slog up a near horizontal road.

The Dom Luís I bridge is the city's icon, a two level metal structure opened in 1886.  The decks show just how great the height difference is between areas of the city, with the river Duoro running in a gorge.  The lower deck carries traffic and pedestrians between the quaysides, but the top deck was turned over to the Porto Metro in 2003.

We crossed the Dom Luís I on the lower deck then climbed a very steep hill to reach the top and the tram stop at Jardim do Morro.

Porto's Metro is technically a pre-metro; it's a tram network that runs in tunnels through the city centre but on the surface outside it.  

There's a long central tunnel that crosses the city, which is shared by most of the lines, while line D runs perpendicular to this in a different tunnel.  Jardim do Morro is on line D and so after crossing the high level bridge we descended underground; an interesting combination.

Trinidade is the hub of the network, the only station served by all six lines, and its design is typical for the underground stations.  The Metro was constructed in the 21st century (though a lot of the central tunnel is much older) and so there's a certain uniformity to its architecture; plain tiles, simple signage, escalators.

Small shops have been squeezed into the design, both at the platform level and on the extremely wide cross passage for interchange.  The station was clearly built with an eye to future crowds.

We changed to the purple line, E, which goes to the airport (its station is literally outside the terminal) and went a couple of stops to Casa de Musica.  

At the moment this is simply another stop on the common tunnel, but there is currently work underway to build a new line, Line G, also known as Linha Rosa because it'll be pink on the map.  You can't miss the works - the line goes from Casa de Musica to Sao Bento via the historic portion of the city, so every now and then you'll encounter a street closed off and marked with tatty signage.

Reading up on the Metro before I'd left I'd been irritated to learn that Linha Rosa was due to open in July 2025.  I was one month too early to visit!  As it turned out, I didn't miss out on much.  Judging by the works I could see through the Heras fencing, it'll be more like July 2026 at the earliest.

Can't see anyone nipping down there for a train in the next four weeks, can you?

I'd picked Casa de Musica as our destination station because I wanted to see the large rotunda nearby.  I'd not realised that metro works would make this impossible; virtually the whole thing was screened off.  In  addition to Line G, there's also a Line H under construction, in a fetching shade of burgundy.  Linha Rubi will connect Casa de Musica to the end of Line D at Santo Ovidio, relieving some of the pressure on the only north-south route across the city.  It's due to open next year but please see that picture above of the Linha Rosa station and adjust your expectations accordingly.  

We walked through a district that seemed to be nothing but hospitals, nearly getting run over by a Land Rover swinging into the military infirmary, and diverted to the next station along, Carolina Michaëlis.  (New drag name right there).

You have to climb some stairs to reach the subsurface platform, but it's been extensively landscaped with this elaborate flower bed.  There was a gardener tending to the plants when we arrived.  It was charming.

Below ground you can see why this is technically a pre-metro rather than the fully-fledged real thing.  The platforms are short and low, and it feels very much more like a tram stop with a roof than anything else.  

Officially, the jury's still out on whether Porto's Metro has been a success.  Ridership has been good but it still hasn't turned a profit.  The common tunnel doesn't really go into the heart of the city, the place where people want to actually go, and the Linha Rosa will only partially solve this: its original route had two more stations but it was cut down to make it more direct.

In my opinion though, it's a triumph.  This is the kind of thing every city of a million people or so should have, everywhere.  As I wandered around Porto, news broke of the UK Governments "massive" investment in regional transport, which will enable Merseyside to get three new railway stations and some posh buses.  It couldn't help but feel inadequate.  

Sao Bento

Our final stop on the Metro was Sao Bento, Porto's finest railway station.  Beneath ground it's much the same as the other D Line stations: some blueish tiles, thin san-serif typeface, plenty of space to move about. 

Its real triumph, however, is topside.  The railways first came to Porto in the late 19th century, with a station at Campanhã.  As at Crown Street in Liverpool, this stop on the edge of the city was immediately judged inadequate, and so plans were formulated for deep tunnels to be constructed under the city to a new terminus that was handy for the residents and businesses.

In a story that will be familiar to anyone with a passing interest in European history, this ran afoul of the Catholic Church.  The site picked for the new station was a run down convent which the Church suddenly decided was extremely important and shouldn't be demolished.  The city compromised, and decided to knock down only parts of the convent itself, including preserving the church at the site.

Works dragged on for decades.  Finally, a temporary station was opened at the site in 1896: it's worth noting that the first train of dignitaries was two minutes late because they were still laying tracks.  They then began to look at plans for a permanent station, with budget restrictions hanging over their head, and bosses in Lisbon cutting where they could.  By this point the demands of the railways had shifted, and the city realised they'd need more space for the station.  Enter the Catholic Church again, objecting to the destruction of the rest of the convent and the church next to it, so negotiations began once more.  A plan was formulated by 1904, the construction actually began, and the station was finally inaugurated.  In 1916.

Look, you can't do anything really good really quickly.  Sao Bento quickly established itself as an icon of the Portuguese railways and has been preserved for the nation.

The main reason for this is the tilework in the entrance hall.  Designed and installed by Jorge Colaço, they track the history of the north of Portugal, the history of transport, and the delights of rural life.

 

People come from all over the world to see the tiles, which was very irritating to me personally.  I'm used to visiting railway stations and being overawed by their magnificence while regular members of the public flit about in ignorance.  I shouldn't have to elbow my way for photos past school trips and gangs of random Iowans.  Don't they know who I am?

Perhaps this contributed to my lack of enthusiasm for the station.  It was very pretty, of course, but it didn't wow me.  I think it's perhaps down to the fact that the station's actual architecture was quite ordinary.  It was the tiles that made it, not the building.  I like to be wowed by a space and this didn't really do it for me.  This is the problem with hype.  If I'd known nothing about Sao Bento I might have been blown away but I walked in expecting "one of the world's most beautiful railway stations" and it wasn't that for me.

 

 

Obviously it's far more attractive than, say, Bootle New Strand, and I'm being a miserable sod.  That may be because I'm in England writing this instead of larking about in Europe again.  Take me back.