Brum Life

Landing in Birmingham, England was a bit of a shock to the system after having been on the road for nearly 5 months. We settled in quickly and eagerly explored our new home city for the next 3 months. Our spacious 2-bedroom apartment was right in the heart of Birmingham, overlooking the bustling New Street and nestled amongst the Bullring shopping centre. We were so pleased to find this place through spareroom.co.uk, and ended up with the apartment to ourselves for the majority of our time here! It was refreshing to have a home base after being on the move constantly.

Birmingham (or “Brum” as it is known locally) is the second largest city in England and has a somewhat negative reputation among the Brits (mostly those from London). Everyone we spoke to always had the same look of surprise on their face when we told them we planned to live in Brum for the next 3 months, and while none of those we told about the move were overly positive, they had also never been before. Birmingham was a boom/bust city of the industrial revolution and is known as ‘the Black-country’ of the West Midlands due to the black smog that enshrouded the city during the coal era. The city claims they have “more canals than Venice” which we can attest to, as they seem to be everywhere! The canals were a real innovation for their time back in the late 1800s as they were primarily used to transport goods like coal around different parts of England. Now they're mostly a tourist attraction, but make for a nice city spectacle. Birmingham also has a modern central library which is the largest in Europe, has an iconic bull statue outside the Bullring markets, many classic British pubs and is also the birthplace of Black Sabbath (Ozzy Osbourne’s band). We really enjoyed our time here in ‘Brum’ and think its unpopular reputation among the Brits is rather unfair.

Jelley hit the ground running on arrival, having secured a job as Village Operations Manager for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Organising Committee. It was a great continuation of her career journey, gaining a new perspective planning for and delivering at a major sporting event from the local organising committee side. The experience was as challenging as expected, but also came with the unexpected bonus of lifelong friends and a lot of laughter along the way. For the 50% of our family & friends reading from the USA, the Commonwealth Games are similar to the Olympics, held in the alternate 4 year cycle, and are a large multi-sporting event for 72 Commonwealth nations and territories. There are a variety of familiar Olympic sports (i.e. Swimming, Athletics, etc.), but also some uniquely Commonwealth sports like Lawn Bowls, Netball, and Squash!

While Jelley worked full time on the games, Luke was selected for the highly coveted position of full time ‘house-husband’ where he expanded his cooking repertoire, cleaned the apartment and made sure the snack supplies were well stocked. He made the most of his time and achieved a lot of personal development goals such as becoming a better chef, getting in the best shape of his life, creating a passion podcast with some friends, and even tracking down his biological father for the first time ever! Turns out Luke’s biological dad lives right near his hometown in California so it was great for him to be able to reconnect.

Luke also became an unofficial City Mayor, signing up to receive a ‘Key to the City’ which was a unique experiential art project run in conjunction with the Commonwealth Games. This special key would give access to a behind-the–scenes look of the city and unlock secret doors, alleyways, and padlocks – sort of like a citywide scavenger hunt! From the highest building in Birmingham to the underground tunnels below New Street Station, it was an entertaining way to explore and engage new parts of Birmingham. Here's the link --> www.keytothecitybrum.org

One of our favourite parts of living in the UK is the vast network of trains connecting every single city and small village. The trains can take you just about anywhere you want to go, which was great because it meant that we could still adventure around the region affordably without needing a car. Our apartment was a 3 minute walk to Grand Central/New Street train station so it was as if adventure was quite literally at our doorstep. We decided to take a few weekend trips out of Brum while Jelley still had weekends off. Our first trip was to the neighbouring nation of Wales to do a hike up Mt. Snowdon in Snowdonia National Park. We found this adventure via a group of avid hikers we met on the Meetup app. The whole weekend was organised by a lovely group of quintessentially British hikers who frequented the outdoors of the UK. This trip was an overnight excursion arranged at a purpose-built Duke of Edinburgh outdoor education cabin just outside Snowdonia National Park.

After our train journey and getting to know the interesting group of hikers, we woke up bright and early the next day to tackle the summit. Mt. Snowdon is the tallest mountain in Wales 1085 metres (3,560 ft), not particularly high by US & NZ standards, but a bucket-list peak for Brits. As they say, "it always rains in Wales", and that was proven true just as we reached the summit when the clouds and rain rolled in. We had a fantastic time on this trip and it reminded us a lot of hiking in New Zealand with all the beautiful scenery.

Our second weekend trip to Wales was a camping trip with some of the same fun crowd. Our newly found ‘Brum Mum’ Ruth offered to drive us down to the Brecon Beacons National Park area, where we camped and spent 2 days hiking the Fan y Big circuit (you read that right, lol) and the 4 waterfalls. We again experienced all four seasons in one day, worried our tent may blow away in the night, but had a blast. We are so grateful to have met this niche community of outdoors enthusiasts and loved being able to tag along to the adventures, not too far from Birmingham.

The 4-day holiday weekend for the Queen’s Jubilee came quickly and we left it far too late to plan anything too exciting, so we resigned ourselves to the idea we would be spending the weekend around Birmingham (something pretty unheard of for A Kiwi and A Cali!) After realising a miscommunication, Jelley found out her Kiwi friend Lou was actually staying home in West Worthing for the weekend (near Brighton in the South of England). So we decided to make a spontaneous last-minute train journey down to the south coast and spend a couple of days with Lou & her partner Jono. It was neat to explore this area together. Every region of England has its own cultural flavour (and accent) and it was awesome to explore this corner together. We even took out some bicycles for a (longer than expected) bike ride to the beach before enjoying a classic pub lunch.

We were thankful to be able to host several visitors from London for their first time in Brum and show them around our home city. Laura came up during a heatwave from London & enjoyed the renowned nightlife with Jelley, followed by Vic & Andrew arriving the next day to a less than energetic welcome from a very tired Kiwi. After Luke’s famous walking tour in the pouring rain, we decided to venture further afield to the neighbouring town of Warwick and we were all surprised by the interesting tour of Warwick Castle before paddling the less historic, but equally as iconic, giant swans along the River Avon (a name shared by Christchurch’s river).

Our American friend Nial (who visited us in NZ around 2017) also made it up to Birmingham from Germany for a weekend, and Lou popped up from Worthing during the Commonwealth Games to watch the Netball and say hello. Our final visitor Greer is currently enroute to see what the fuss is about just before we move on from our home here. It has been awesome to be able to share some of our favourite places in Brum with some of our great friends!

We were running out of time to spend together as the demands of Jelley’s job caught up, but we did make an effort to try out a different local park each week to escape the concrete city centre and see more areas in the outskirts of Birmingham. A particularly lovely area was the Malvern Hills ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ (lol), where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien spent many a day strolling and creating stories.

With Jelley all in on work, Luke decided to take a solo trip down to Spain because…why not? The flight down from Birmingham to Madrid only cost £15 so it was an easy sell! Luke arrived in Madrid at the same time the World NATO summit was on and while walking around, he stumbled upon some spouses of The Heads of State. While the Presidents and Prime Ministers of NATO member nations were paving the way for Finland & Sweden to join NATO, all of their spouses were being hosted by the Queen of Spain (bet you didn’t know there was a Queen of Spain!?) Letizia Rocasoano at Madrid’s famous Opera House. The Spanish secret service was ubiquitous, but Luke did manage to catch a glimpse of Jill Biden (of USA), Brigitte Macron (of France), Queen Letizia (of Spain), and many other famous first ladies/gentlemen. It was an unexpected and fortuitous sighting!

Luke spent a few days exploring the many sights of Madrid before heading south to a small town of Murcia. There were 4 Spanish ladies who joined us on our hiking tour to The Lost City in Colombia who kindly extended an offer to host us in their home city of Murcia, should we ever make it down there. So, Luke took them up on the opportunity! About 4 hours South of Madrid, Murcia (pronounced “Murthia” with a Spainish accent) is a tranquil little town with incredible architecture. One of the Spanish ladies, Pilar, generously opened up her home for him to stay for the weekend along with her husband Ricardo, their son Marco, and their dog ‘chicha’. They were excellent hosts and, while they only spoke a little bit of English and Luke only spoke broken Spanish, Luke felt as if he was part of the family. They went out for dinner, watched a live comedy show (all in Spanish which was hilarious in its own way), and even went on a lovely day trip to ‘la playa’ to eat some delicious seafood paella.

After a wonderful visit to Murcia, Luke worked his way up the coast of Spain visiting the gorgeous coastal towns of Alicante, Valencia, and Taragona, which were all charming in their own way. A particular highlight was visiting the historical Castillo de Santa Barbara in Alicante, which was a castle spectacularly perched atop a hill offering 360 degree views of the coastline. Unfortunately for Luke, his trip in Spain was during one of Europe's record breaking heat waves where temperatures surged as high as 39 Degrees Celsius (102 Fahrenheit) so activities had to be minimised to escape the sweltering heat. The best place always seemed to be at one of Spain’s innumerable beaches though.

Upon returning to Brum, the Commonwealth Games were in full swing and Jelley was working and living full time at one of the villages hosting athletes from nations all over the world. Wanting to be part of the action, Luke applied to volunteer at New Zealand House, which was a dedicated functions/events space for New Zealanders to congregate during the Games. They put Luke to work on distributing athletes uniforms, selling NZ merchandise, and being a friendly face to say “Kia Ora” to guests and athletes that arrived. Luke even got to meet some high profile New Zealanders like Grant Robertson (NZ Deputy Prime Minister), Mike McRoberts (NZ Journalist and TV3 News Presenter), and heeeeaaaps of NZ athletes. Luke was really grateful to be involved in something so unique and fun, but also to get the chance to see first-hand what the heck Jelley has been up to for all these years!

When we weren’t working on delivering the Games, we also got the fortunate chance to see a few competitions live! Over the course of the Games, Luke got to see Rugby Sevens, Netball, Squash, Volleyball, & Athletics, and Jelley managed to tag along to a couple too. It was such a whirlwind of thrill to witness these incredible athletes compete against some of the best in the world. It was all so electrifying to see the city of Birmingham come alive in celebration for the Games and even somewhat emotional to witness the thousands of international spectators all supporting in stands that have been empty for the majority of the past 2 years. The closing ceremony even had a guest appearance by Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne (now 73!). Jelley has been through the international sporting events journey many times in her career, and it meant a lot to Luke to be by her side with this one. It will be something we remember forever.

Now that the Games are over, we are getting ready to say goodbye to Birmingham and prepare for the next phase of our adventure, which will be a 10-day hike through The Peaks of the Balkans winding through Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo. One of our intrepid friends Greer has made the great migration from NZ to the UK and will be joining the fun, along with Nial as our chief navigator hailing from USA/Germany. We are excited to be back out on the road again very soon and launch into this next chapter of our journey together. Look forward to sharing it with you soon!

Until Then,

- A Kiwi and A Cali