Birmingham City Centre to Villa Park – Full Cycle Route using Quiet Streets and A34 Cycle Route

Welcome to Bike Routes of Brum! A channel dedicated to showing safe and quiet cycle routes to cycle around Birmingham – inspired by @Londoncycleroutes .

In this video, we will be cycling from Chamberlain Square, in the City Centre, to Villa Park. The route heads through the City Centre before joining the A34 Cycle Route before using quiet streets and Aston Park to get to the ground.

The route should take about 20 minutes to cycle and the .GPX file for the route is in the link below:

https://www.komoot.com/tour/1375378364

hi you’re watching bike roots of Brum a channel dedicated to finding safe cycle routes across Birmingham in this video we’ll be cycling from the city center to Villa Park with the football season in full swing and with it getting dark so early I wanted to try and find a route that didn’t involve using the canals so in this route we’ll be using mostly quiet streets and protected cycle Lanes including part of the a34 cycle route and it should take about 20 minutes to cycle aside from the par through Aston Park which will be full of people on Match Day the route should be well lit throughout I’ve put a link to the route into the description below so you can download the GPX file for yourself so we’re going to start in Chamberlain square and head down into Victoria Square where we then take a left and cycle past the council building towards colemore row as you can tell the German Market was on whilst I was filming and so I decided to head this way rather than Down News Street and towards Corporation Street this part really highlights one of the big problems that I have with cycling in Birmingham and that’s that there’s no clear way for cyclists once you get into the city center roads have been made one way for cars in loads of different places which makes sense but the lives of cyclists could be made a lot easier by the council by just putting exemptions for cyclists on streets like watero Street which would mean we could avoid car Moro there and the buses as it stands I just had to kind of make it up as I went along um but basically heading for temple Row in the best way you can kind of work out how to do it um we follow Temple row around St Phillips Cathedral and pigeon Park this road isn’t really used that much by cars so it’s quite nice to cycle along um we continue past House of frasia and the wonderful great western arcade there on your left where we then pop out onto Ball Street um I didn’t realize it when I was cycling but you can actually just hop onto the other side of the pavement here and follow it around uh to the left onto Corporation Street which is what I actually ended up doing still a little bit of a mess around here with all the tram works but you’re not here for long as we kind of get to this roundabout and you can cycle through it um just watch out for buses that come here from the main uh Queen way but you can cycle through this bit I think just the best place to do it is just where like actually come off this Crossing because it’s actually quite a big curb um but we’re going to continue along Corporation Street and then come up to the mini roundabout go straight over and then we get the sight of The Magnificent red brick late Victorian Birmingham magistrates caught there on your left and the Central Methodist Hall on your right we follow this road around the bend towards the children’s hospital where it BEC steelhouse lane and then head towards the blue cycop path that you can see there where we drop down and head along next to James W Queen’s way towards the end pass to n navigate our way past this big roundabout named Lancaster circus um once we’re through the underpass we find ourselves under the Aston flyover where we head towards this other underpass where we have to take a left uh unless you want to lift your bike up the steps now this bit feels like it goes on forever uh it’s quite a shallow gradient but once you’re out you’re going to then go back on yourself and head towards uh Newtown row where we’re going to pick up the a34 blue route um just because with some of these slabs cuz they seem a bit um dodgy to be honest I was all right riding over but just be careful um the a34 blue rout is one of the two main Flagship cycle routs in the city the other being the a38 blue rout which I’ve cycled along in the previous video um this one’s probably not quite as Scenic as the a38 one um but it does seem to be designed pretty well and it was really easy to cycle along I’ll take this opportunity to apologize for the quality the video um it was pissing down on the day that I filmed this and so the camera got all splattered with rain uh which makes it a bit hard to see in places um given the time of year it was as well it does make it look more miserable than it really is so um I might end up reshooting it if I’m stuck for ideas later down the line and I can find a sunny day um but like the a38 route this one was also opened in 2019 and it now stretches up to the One-Stop Shopping Center in Perry bar uh it was meant to be one of the ways to get to the Alexander Stadium for the Commonwealth Games but it never actually has managed to make it as far as the stadium which is a shame because it hasn’t really kind of done what it’s set out to but this route does provide a really good way to get to parts of North burum that were previously not really safe to cycle to and hopefully people do actually use it um I actually think compared to the a38 route this one does seem to go past a lot more places where people actually live um especially further up the um the route and it could provide a more sustainable way for people to get around town yeah you’ve got this retail Park on your left with you know an Audi of Farm Foods and a couple of other shops which means that this route connects people’s houses with supermarkets which gives people an option to not have to use their cars and this really is what these cycle routs should be built to do which is give people more options on how to get around the city so not just just having to rely on your car um it also goes past one of in my opinion the most beautiful pubs in the city the Barton arms which is just there on your right it’s a stunning grade two listed Pub that’s well known for its Stone glass windows and its Thai food um pretty sure there’s some railings outside to lock up your bike if you FC see a Swift one on the way to the match uh but now we’re going to climb this little Hill where the route starts to split off onto the High Street so it can circumnavigate this little round about that’s coming up um if you wanted to go to Par Bar you’d just kind of carry on along the Route but this is where we’re going to leave it um the roundabout itself is quite busy I think it’s got about six different exes which is why it’s called six ways uh but luckily there’s an underpass that we can use to avoid having to go on the road um you could walk your bike along that zebra Crossing if you wanted to but we’re going to go down here through this uh urine centered underpass and cross over the a34 here and the road goes around here and you come to a zebra crossing here which again you could walk your bike over here I just kind of made my way out into the uh into the street but we go left here onto witton Road um it’s 20 mil an hour around here so theoretically shouldn’t be too busy uh well and you shouldn’t have too many fast cars going around here but we’re not on for long cuz we go right here onto Albert Road um again this is kind of a residential Road it’s all 20 M an hour along here and you’ve got quite a lot of speed bumps so hopefully people shouldn’t be resing it behind you um I think with it being match days I’m pretty sure there’s parking restrictions around here as well so it shouldn’t be too busy with cars I think Wht and Road probably would be um especially if you’re leaving the ground but for the I mean if it’s busy with cars then they’re not going to be going very fast so you should be fine to cycle but like I said this route kind of avoids the main roads and if you go along Albert Road you should be all right I can’t ever imagine it being too busy on a match day so to give you your bearings this road is basically taken us parallel with Aston Park and towards King Edward’s school and you can just see the Aston Expressway uh in the distance which is kind of the direction we’re heading but we’re not actually going to go onto the accident Expressway and before we get to it we’re going to take this left here onto it does actually have a name surprisingly up at Thomas Street even though it’s basically just a Ply little side road around the back of the school and then we hop up into Aston Park and towards Aston Hall um Aston Hall which you can just about see in the distance as these trees clear uh was built between 1618 and 1635 and according to Wikipedia is a leading example of the Jacobian prodigy G house whatever that means um it was built for Sir Thomas Holt after which the whole end’s named who was B olds a bit of a bastard um it’s one of the most haunted places apparently in the UK and open for visitors to have a look around now I may be a little bit biased as I’m AA fan but surely this is one of the greatest sites in English football walking down these aut terminal Tree Line streets just see Villa Park appearing out beautiful now in order to get to the place where you actually want to store your bikes um hopefully on Match days they usually open that gate that kind of sits um at the bottom of the Trinity Road stand there that you can see uh and you just should just be able to wheel your bike through um as you can see from my amazing map that I’ve drawn it’s located around the back of the Villa Village Store uh you know the Villa shop um so just will you B through the car park and it will be around the back of there um alternatively if those Gates AR open you can always access it from wit and Lane as well and then go around the back um I’ve included a picture of the uh the cyon stands I’ve not actually been there myself uh but it was tweeted by the The Villa team uh I don’t know if they’re proud of it because it does look like the place where you know school kids go and have a crafty um it’s pretty underwhelming to be honest and kind of embarrassing but that’s all you got to go with at the moment so um yeah hopefully with the improvements that they’ll make to the stadium they’ll put in some better cycle infrastructure who knows but thanks again for watching the video I hope you found it useful if you have any other ideas for alternate routes or want to mention anything that forgotten please feel free to comment below uh I try to upload these videos as much as I can so don’t forget to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss any rots uh thanks ever so much again for watching