Birmingham's Custard Factory

 If this statement is true, and I believe it is, then an OSM map of  a city  is meta-art!

This sign adorns the Custard Factory in Digbeth, close to the City Centre; now a thriving arts and media hub with many small businesses located there. As the name suggests it was originally home to Birds Custard manufacture.

Heart of England Way completely mapped!

On Sunday I completed a short 4Km stretch around Blockley, the last remaining gap in the OSM map.  Thanks are due to everyone who contributed over the years, collaborating in mapping this long distance route.

The Heart of England Way stretches for some 100 miles through England's midlands. This route proves that the midlands does not justify its image of an industrial wasteland. The Way starts in Staffordshire's heathlands and forest on Cannock Chase and passes through the small city of Lichfield with its three-spired cathedral known as the "Mother of the Midlands". It then passe between the industrial giants of Coventry and Birmingham, although with  the peaceful countryside it chooses, you wouldn't know they were there.  Rural Warwickshire beckons as the Way meanders through the remains of the Forest of Arden. The final part sees it sharing much of its route with the Monarch's Way as it leapfrogs from one cosy Cotswold village to another. It finally ends up in the tourist honeypot of Bourton-on-the Water, where it links with the Cotswold Way.

The most popular Guide to the Way by Richard Sale  has the route going the other way, but describing it this way  reflects more the order in which we mapped it.

Official website here
Best map is of course Lonvia's Hiking map

Architectural Heritage in Edgbaston

It seems that just about every other house in Edgbaston is listed!
( for non-UK readers a listed building is deemed to be of architectural or historic merit and there are strict planning rules as to what you are allowed and not allowed to do in altering and maintaining it).

As you can see from the map below it's a historic part of Birmingham, mostly where the old industrialists lived and thanks to the Calthorpe Estate and the proclivities of said nineteenth century industrialists there weren't many factories or pubs or cheap back-to-back housing built there ( all the yellow buildings are listed)

A few  examples of listed buildings in the area

As you can see it's not a cheap area of Birmingham to live in, even today