#093 Albion Inn, Tividale, West Midlands : 2005 to 2012

The canal journey between Wolverhampton and Birmingham is always interesting, but the opportunities to stop and find pubs is somewhat limited. This isn't too surprising as the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN) were, until fairly recently, mostly hidden away and closed off to the general public. In their heyday, these canals were like the railways and were extremely busy transporting goods around the Midlands. They were a place of work, not leisure.

Over the years we'd exhausted most of the available stops, usually Tipton and the Black Country Museum, but one day we decided to experiment and we moored up on the BCN Old Main Line near to where it goes over the Netherton Tunnel Branch of the BCN Main Line. We only had our 20-year-old Nicholson's Guide to go on and weren't sure if any of the pubs marked would still be open.

We were in luck and we found three pubs, none of which did food...until a helpful local directed us to the Toby Carvery just up the road. It was only then that I realised where we were as none of the streets we'd walked along were familiar to me.

Today's subject is the Albion Inn which was our last port of call before the Toby Carvery.

This was lunchtime on Thursday 1st September 2005. Although it looks to be an inviting prospect from the outside, inside it is a basic local boozer and there was no food on offer.

Our next visit was on Saturday 25th August 2007, again at lunchtime, but this time it was on the outward trip at the start of our holiday and we were heading for Wolverhampton.

There were no changes of note, but one of the signs still said "Bar Snacks" and there were none!

We haven't stopped there since then, but I was in the environs a few days ago and took this picture.

It was taken on Tuesday 4th December 2012. At first glance, nothing much has changed, but on closer inspection the main signs have been replaced with ones saying "Free House" although the hanging sign is the same as previously. Two satellite dishes have also appeared - a definite sign of the times!

#041 The Fountain Inn, Tipton : 2003 to 2011

This is a pub I wish I'd visited before 2003. The Fountain Inn has a long history and survived when the Tipton Green area was substantially redeveloped in the late 1970's. Now the pub stands, almost alone, amidst buildings that are less than 20 years old.

Our first visit was at lunchtime on 27th August 2003 on our way back from a canal trip that had taken us to Leicester. As I remember, it was a pleasant pub that served very good pub food at very reasonable prices.

Four years later and we make another lunchtime stop on 6th September 2007 on our way back from our second trip along the Llangollen Canal.

Very little had changed...fortunately.

And so to our most recent visit. Again lunchtime on 6th September 2011, this time on our return from a trip along the Caldon Canal.

Very little has changed, but the vegetation is now in hanging baskets and the signage on the side of the pub is more restrained. Inside it was still the same, but there was one aspect that I've not encountered for a long while. The barmaid was young and gorgeous, far more attractive than you would expect to find in a small backstreet boozer and she was very good at her job (usually ability seems to be in inverse proportion to attractiveness!). This set me to thinking that you don't often find young, attractive barmaids in fairly bog standard pubs any more. I'm sure it used to be a more common phenomenon, but maybe I'm just getting old and developing 'rose tinted' glasses!

The main reason that I wish I'd visited The Fountain Inn sooner is it's history. The pub sign depicts a boxer which, at first sight, seems to be somewhat incongruous with the name. But, as the sign by the door and the statue by where we moored indicate, this was the training base for William Perry, the Tipton Slasher. He was a bare knuckle boxer and was Champion of England from 1850 - 1857. His nickname derived from his style of fighting.

He was originally a canal boatman but became famous as a fighter in his teens. Ultimately he ended up back in poverty after betting everything on his disastrous last fight. Amazing how things don't seem to have changed for boxers in the intervening 150 years!