On the journey home we stopped at Bicester North, one of the stations for that ancient town.

The name of this town is of course pronounced “Bister” to rhyme with “mister”. The -cester part of the name immediately betrays it as Anglo-Saxon as it comes originally from the Latin word castrum, denoting a Roman fortress or fortified town. Where such settlements were later taken over by the Anglo-Saxons, the word mutated in their language to ceaster (with the ‘c’ pronounced as modern ‘ch’), giving -cester or -chester in many modern town names.

What the Bi- part of the name means is a different matter and no one knows for sure. Bicester has been spelt in a number of different ways in its history and these suggest a possible origin in the personal name of the person who reinhabited the town in the Anglo-Saxon period. We will never know for certain.

We have arrived at Moor Street Station rather than the main station, Birmingham New Street.

Moor Street is a fine old station which has, I am glad to say, been kept much in its original form.

Our first stop was here, at the Centenary Lounge, on the station, for a cup of tea. (Photo by Tigger.)

The heart of Birmingham is known as the Bullring and this sculpture is its very symbol.

Piccadilly, but not as we Londoners know it!

We stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant and when we emerged, this was what we found.

It had startled to rain. We donned our raincoats and struck out bravely.

We passed Victoria Square, site of, among other buildings of interest, this one called the Council House.

We had had our lunch but this lesser black backed gull was about to scavenge for his. Bon appétit!

We decided to take the tram. Trams are making a comeback in many cities. They are versatile – able to travel through city streets or on repurposed suburban railway lines where they reach impressive speeds. The tram thus shares the qualities of both buses and trains.

We had hoped that this tram would carry us into Wolverhampton but this intention was frustrated by a road collision that forced the tram to stop short of its usual terminus. We left the tram at a stop called The Royal and set out on foot.

We eventually reached our destination which was Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Here are a few of the works we saw.

Likeness Guaranteed, David Mach, 1995

Moses, Philip John Evett, 1953

King Kong, Nicholas Monro, 1971

One of the galleries

Fountain, Minton, c.1880-4

If this suggests that my preferences in art, at least photographically, lie with sculpture and 3-dimensional objects, rather than with “flat art” such as paintings, then the suggestion is correct.

Leaving the gallery, we had to repeat our walk, albeit in reverse, to regain the tram stop at The Royal. Happily, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining.

This time, we stopped short of the terminus and left the tram at a stop adjacent to Snow Hill Station. As our tickets are for “Birmingham Stations” and not for a specific station we can board the London train here.

It was just as well that we did. Our train was the 17:52, right in the rush hour. We were able to find seats at Snow Hill but when the train reached Moor Street, there was standing room only.

This photo, taken from the train shows that clouds are gathering.

A blue sky with big white clouds alternates with a sky overcast with leaden-hued cloud cover.

That is how it is in this land where the weather is reputed to be a favourite topic of conversation. Drive a few miles further on and the weather is quite different.

We have made a stop at Leamington Spa.

This name is pronounced much as you would expect except for the first syllable which rhymes with the lem in “lemon”. The name is confidently ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon lemen-tun, “farm on the river Leam”.

The chalybeate (iron-bearing) waters here were known since Roman times and are what have given the town its designation of a spa. (The original Spa, in case you have ever wondered, was the town of that name in Belgium.)

We shall shortly arrive at our destination. More later.

Tigger has taken this week off from work and so we have a few outings planned. Later in the week we are going on a special trip – but more about that in due course.

This morning we took the bus to Marylebone Station. In a previous post, I described St Pancras as London’s most beautiful railway station but Marylebone has a charm all of its own and is one of my favourites.

In the station, I bought coffee and croissants while Tigger negotiated with one of the ticket machines. Then we boarded the 10:10 train for Birmingham Moor Street.

We have a Two Together Railcard that gives us 30% off the cost of tickets when we travel together.

The weather is cloudy-sunny and cool (17 deg C) but the forecast is for rain later.

How will we fare? See later posts!