11C: Winson Green

Continuing the journey on Birmingham's 11C Outer Circle...

The 11C leaves Bearwood via residential streets with a high percentage of parked white vans. Numbers on the bus are noticeably on the increase. Plenty of students now travelling, too. This is why the 11C is a double and not a single deck. I notice one student reading a book on dentistry with grotesque pictures of teeth in varying states of decay. Another is from India and comments how green Birmingham is. He has a point: there are plenty of parks and open spaces and this is so unlike crowded India, he says.

Not surprisingly, there’s more mobile phone music and in this instance, two competitors battle it out. One concedes.

City Road is a long row of terraces behind which are more. The city hospital has two queues, one of smokers sat on a low wall, excluded leper-like from within; and a decent number awaiting the bus. Seats become a premium. We pass the grimness of Winson Green prison and I wonder whether it’s better for Centro to name the stop as such rather than pander to Traveline’s predilection for junction names.

(With thanks to Simon21 for correcting "Winson")