#245 The Station, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands : 2004 to 2018

"But the Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield isn't on the canal!", I hear you say.
"And, you'd be right", I reply. "Let me tell you a tale...if only I could remember the details!"

It was the evening of Tuesday 31st August 2004 and on our journey back from Oxford (the long way around) we moored for the night at The Kingsley (#178) on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal. This was a place we'd often stopped at but, for some reason that escapes me now, we caught a cab into Sutton Coldfield. (I presume that it was because we fancied a pub crawl in, relatively, new surroundings than a night in one pub we were very familiar with.)

I had been to The Station previously (and enjoyed it) but not as part of a canal holiday.

As I recall it was a proper pub...but no other memories remain. (We did visit a couple more pubs and finished the night in a local Chinese restaurant where I encountered the best ever Chinese curry sauce! Not yet returned!)

I don't think that I've actually had a drink in The Station since then, but in my other life as an artist, I frequently attend craft markets in Sutton and the cheapest car parking is in the station car park. (No not the pub car park, but the one in the actual station next door to the pub - clear?)

So, on Saturday 17th August 2013, I took this picture on my way back to the car park. Unsurprisingly, it had undergone a complete redecoration. The Station is one of the most popular pubs in Sutton Coldfield and also hosts a comedy club.

I was back, with my camera, but not at the market on Saturday 5th May 2018 to see the newly redecorated version of The Station.

Quite a bold repainting job; and I'm pleased to report that The Station is still as popular as ever.

This is what it looks like given the Photo Digital Art treatment.

 

#180 The Boat, Minworth, West Midlands : 1986 to 2015

In the early 1980's The Boat was, technically, my local pub as I lived just around the corner in Minworth for a few months. It sits at the side of the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal and is the last, reasonably safe, overnight mooring before the centre of Birmingham. Over the years, we have been intermittent visitors having passed by more times than we've stopped.

Our first ever boating visit to The Boat was on the evening of Sunday 22nd August 1982, but sadly there's no pictorial record of the visit. I do, however, have a photo taken the next day as we made our way down the windswept Curdworth Locks.

Our next visit to The Boat was in the year that I'd decided to start taking a picture of each pub we visited. This was on the evening of Wednesday 30th July 1986.

Back in those days it had a cosy lounge and a fairly standard bar with pool table and dart board, but (as I recall) didn't do food.

Our boat, Emma Jane, moved away from the Midlands for a number of years and so we didn't stop there again until the evening of Tuesday 5th September 1995, close to the end of the journey bringing Emma Jane back to the Midlands.

On the outside, a complete transformation from a fairly standard Ansells pub into a 'Big Steak' pub!

We returned less than a year later, on the lunchtime of Friday 31st May 1996. This was a pit-stop on an 'epic' journey that took us from Fazeley Junction to Catherine-de-Barnes on the Grand Union Canal in a day (10 hours 20 minutes travelling time!).

Even in just 9 months, part of the exterior signage had disappeared and the paint was starting to peel!

It took us another 10 years before we came back to The Boat. This was mainly because we'd worked out that we could travel from Birmingham city centre to The Kingsley or Curdworth in a day's boating so we sailed on by The Boat on many occasions.

This was at lunchtime on Thursday 8th June 2006 and we still made it into the centre of Birmingham by evening - a 5 hour journey! Another complete transformation of the outside of the pub including a small extension at the front.

We returned at lunchtime on Thursday 6th June 2010 as part of what was, essentially, a repeat of our 2006 journey - this time it took us 5 hours 20 minutes to get into Birmingham!

Not too much of a change apart from the sheltered smoking area that has been added.

This next picture was taken on the afternoon of Sunday 11th May 2014 as I happened to be in the area following a Craft Fair at the Brook Marston Hotel. (There seemed to be little likelihood of us stopping here in the near future, so I thought I'd add a photo to the collection.)

Yet another external transformation. The smoking area remained, but the new extension has been radically altered.

Having predicted that we wouldn't be stopping here in the near future, our next visit was on the evening of Sunday 14th June 2015.

 Little change in a year. The internal layout of The Boat has hardly changed over the years, but it has been refurbished several times. The Boat has its own website and will hopefully be able to survive as a proper pub that does some food. 

#178 Cuttle Bridge Inn (aka The Kingsley), Kingsbury Road, Birmingham : 1998 to 2015

The first time we moored at The Kingsley was on the evening of Tuesday 2nd September 1997, but it was late, dark and the picture I do have isn't very good (taken with my old 35mm camera) so I haven't scanned it for inclusion.

The Kingsley was something of a godsend for us whenever we were using the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal as it was a brand new Beefeater Inn along a stretch of canal where it was a long time to the next guaranteed eating place.

Our next visit was on the evening of Sunday 21st June 1998 after a five hour afternoon journey from the centre of Birmingham.

Back in 1998 we'd not discovered how close Curdworth was to the canal and so a bright, shiny, new Beefeater (with mooring outside) was the perfect stopping point for us.

We were back again the next year in the evening of Sunday 29th August 1999.

There's really not much extra to add as it was a typical Beefeater of its era.

The next time we were there was on the evening of Thursday 31st May 2001.

 On this one week trip we'd miscalculated the timings and left ourselves only one day to get back to Lapworth. Fortunately there was plenty of light and the journey only took us a total of 10 hours 35 minutes the next day!

We were back again on the evening of Wednesday 18th September 2002 (giving us a more leisurely two days to return to our moorings!).

This was the first visit where we noticed that all was not well with The Kingsley. The restaurant was very quiet, the service was not as good as previously and the bar was populated by exclusively young people and not that many of them! (I realise that last sentence makes me sound like an old fart, but Beefeaters were usually frequented by families and you used to get a very mixed clientele, but this looked and felt very different!)

The next time we stopped was on the evening of Tuesday 31st August 2004 and it was no longer a Beefeater!

It hadn't long been under new management and so wasn't too different from the previous visit.

We were there next on Wednesday 6th September 2006, another evening stop, and it had been completely refurbished.

At first this looked extremely promising, but once we were inside it was obvious that despite the money that had been spent on the place it wasn't thriving.

We did moor outside on the evening of Saturday 26th May 2007, but chose to walk into Curdworth for food and drink! I didn't take a picture. Since this time, we've discovered that Curdworth is a more viable stopping place and the two pubs are within easy walking distance...as long as there are enough mooring spaces!

This next photo was taken on Sunday 11th May 2014 as I happened to be driving by.

This looked like the end for The Kingsley and it was, in a way, but not quite the ending I'd expected!

As we sailed by on the morning of Monday 15th June 2015, this is the scene we came across.

It had reinvented itself as an hotel called the Cuttle Bridge Inn! With its proximity to the NEC, Birmingham and the M42 it is the ideal location for an hotel which should give it a steady trade that wasn't there for a pub/restaurant that you had to drive to.

It is now on our radar as a place to revisit. They have a website and are part of a small chain of hotels in the Midlands around Birmingham.  

#087 Beehive, Curdworth, Warks : 2006 to 2011

I'd been aware of the Beehive in Curdworth for a long while and I'd visited for a business lunch many years earlier, but our first canal visit was on Wednesday 6th September 2006.

Usually, when our boating trips took us along the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal, we would stop just outside Curdworth at The Kingsley. This was a Beefeater and had very good moorings, but the pub had been going downhill for some years and was closed when we moored up for the night. So, we took the 20 minute walk back to Curdworth and headed straight for the Beehive.

Inside it is a pub of 'two halves'. As you enter the door from the car park you step into a proper pub and a proper bar populated by locals. Walk through to the back and you're now in the restaurant, which is where we headed after a couple of pints in the bar. The food was good pub grub and we had an enjoyable evening - so good, in fact, that we returned the very next year.

This was on Saturday 26th May 2007 and, unsurprisingly, the place hadn't changed a bit.

Our next visit was on Saturday 28th August 2010.

The Beehive was unchanged on the inside, but on the outside there was the added smoking area just to the right of the front door (and a satellite dish above the toilets).

Our last visit was on Wednesday 1st June 2011 near the end of a one week circuit around the Midlands.

Again the pub was unchanged.

To see how the Beehive has changed over the years follow these links to see what it looked like in the 1900's and 1930's

#051 White Horse, Curdworth, Warks : 1987 to 2011

In the early 1980's I lived in nearby Minworth and drove by the White Horse on many occasions. In those days it was a fairly ordinary looking red brick pub and I never went inside - it was too far to walk to and not interesting enough to drive to!

The first time I set foot inside was at lunchtime on Thursday 16th July 1987 on our way back to our moorings after a two week canal trip.

As you can see it isn't a red brick buidling any more. In the intervening years since I'd moved away, the old pub had been demolished and a new building put in its place. Inside it was modern and without atmosphere, partly due to the fact that we were there very early and were the only people in there at the start. As I recall the food was good and we left, not to return for many years!

On our canal trips we often pass through Curdworth, but almost never stop in the village. For many years, our preferred stop was at The Kingsley just outside the village. When we first stopped there it was a Beefeater and the moorings were right outside. We revisited it many times until it recently closed and then reopened as a restaurant. Another reason for not visiting Curdworth more often has been the lack of mooring space for our boat, which is still an issue.

In recent years we have stopped a Curdworth a few times, but usually drank and ate in The Beehive which is more of an old style village pub with a separate bar and restaurant area. On our last trip we visited the White Horse on our way back to the canal for our last pint of the night.

This photo was taken on Wednesday 1st June 2011. The White Horse is no longer a proper pub, but is one of M&B's Vintage Inns. I have been there a couple of times outside of boating holidays and it is an acceptable place for food, pretty much like any other Vintage Inn.

I have mixed feelings about Vintage Inns; on the one hand the food is generally good and reliable, which can come in handy on our boating adventures, but on the other hand they're all the same and the faux 'county pub' decor lacks any character. However, in this modern age of pub closures, I'm thankful for small mercies...and at least you can still just order a drink!

"There has been a building on the site of The White Horse pub since Georgian times, when the pub was regularly frequented by blacksmiths, farmers and even other publicans. One one family, the Lucas, ran the White Horse from 1845 until the early 20th century." 

This quote is from the Curdworth Parish Council website and just shows how much times have changed!