The two of us were awake and up before 6am so it was a very lazy start to the day. Around 9am Jan heard a boat winding above the Farmers Bridge Flight. It was nb Chuffed with Dave at the tiller. I wandered across to dispose of our rubbish in the CRT area and also say goodbye to Dave & Debby who are heading back to their home mooring.
Debby generously gave Jan some apples which will no doubt come in very useful.
|It Is interesting how you can read other blogs and know the people, yet rarely meet. When you do it seems like you’ve known them for ages.
The location for our Sunday lunch was The Pitcher & Piano beside the canal In Brindley Place. An excellent choice (9/10) with a very attentive waitress and delicious food. Jan opted for the beef whilst I had the roast pork belly. The crackling was crisp and flavoursome. Neither of us had room for a dessert.
After lunch I went for an interesting walk around the Jewellery Quarter. I wont cover much of the history as it can be found here. Suffice to say it has an interesting past with a canal connection. I hadn’t realised it has the largest collection of jewellery related businesses in Europe. There are far fewer than a couple of hundred years ago but many of the buildings appear to still be related to the industry.
The first thing I noticed was this large padlock beside the BMW distributors premises.
It marks the start of the Charm Bracelet Trail. From this point onwards there are bronze plaques in the pavement marking important points on the trail.
The Pen Museum is in the Argent Centre on Fredrick St. Back in the 1800’s 75% of everything written in the world was done with a pen made in Birmingham. The industry only declined in the 1950’s with the general use of the fountain pen and then the biro. I guess I’m showing my age when I remember being at school and dipping the steel nib of my pen into the inkwell on my desk. How I hated those pens!
There is a clock tower on the junction of Fredrick St and Warstone Lane.
This is the Chamberlain Clock which was erected in 1903 to mark the visit of Joseph Chamberlain to South Africa. I’d never heard of Joseph, only Neville. He was a well known Birmingham businessman who subsequently entered parliament as a liberal. After reading the Wikipedia link I now know he was the father of Neville Chamberlain.
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