The Shire Country Park

Saturday 15th June 2019

My favourite novel is The Lord of the Rings, a book that I first read long before they were made into three feature films. Many places claim to have inspired the locations in the book, in Britain and across the world, and in 2012 I was told by the Warden of the Slaidburn Youth Hostel, in the Forest of Bowland, that the village of Slaidburn was the Shire. The visitlancashire.com website details a walk that I followed while in the area and takes you supposedly in the footsteps of J. R. R. Tolkien. However, if any place could lay claim to have inspired the Shire then surely it is the area where Tolkien lived as a child in the tiny hamlet of Sarehole where the River Cole passed through idyllic meadows and nearby an old mill still ground corn as it had done for centuries. Although he only lived there for a few years they were so influential that this mill is referred to in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, one hundred and twenty years later the city of Birmingham has consumed the entire area, but Sarehole Mill has survived as a museum and after the movies came out the tree-lined Cole Valley was renamed, The Shire Country Park. The city of Birmingham has produced a leaflet for a Birmingham Tolkien Trail so armed with this I caught a train to Birmingham New Street station only to find poor weather when I got there.

Setting off from the station I passed the site of King Edward’s School, where Tolkien was educated, although the New Street building was demolished in 1936. Soon after leaving the station I very quickly got lost and had to retrace my steps until eventually I found the right way passing the site of the new Curzon Street station that will serve the new high speed line from London. Finally I reached the Grand Union Canal where I dropped onto the tow path and immediately found much more pleasant surroundings with oxeye daisy growing in abundance beside the water. Red campion and poppies were also to be found, which contrasted sharply with the industrial scenes on the other side of the canal. After a couple of miles walking beside the canal I came off to pass through the Ackers Adventure centre and reach the River Cole where a path roughly follows the river south until eventually I entered The Shire Country Park. Slowly I made my way along the path through idyllic tree-lined scenery beside a delightful stream until I reached Sarehole Mill where J. R. R. Tolkien had many happy memories. Initially I was only going to have a look around outside and not go inside, but eventually I did pay the entrance fee and had a good look around one of the few surviving mills in the country that also has a short exhibition on Tolkien.

Although the skies were grey and overcast the sight of the mill standing proud beside the pond that drove the wheel was mesmerising. I could have stayed there all day, but eventually I tore myself away onto the noisy street and walked around the tree lined pond onto Wake Green Road where the house that Tolkien lived in is still standing, although a private residence. Turning around I looked at the trees that now surround the pond and tried to imagine what the area would have looked like when this whole area was still in the countryside, and it rather made me sad at what has happened in the intervening years. Not far away is Moseley Bog, an area of dense trees that recalls Tolkien’s description of the ‘Old Forest’ on the outskirts of the Shire. Despite a short spell of light rain I was enamoured of the area and spent ages wandering around this fabulous wood that has a maze of paths going everywhere which made the small area seem much larger than it actually is. At the far end of the nature reserve I left the Shire behind and passed along many residential streets eventually reaching Highbury Park, which was a welcome change from the houses, but too manicured compared with the wilderness of the country park.

While in Highbury Park it started raining again and soon after reaching the River Rea the rain became heavy so I just resigned myself to abandoning the Tolkien Trail, which would have taken me into Edgbaston, where Tolkien moved after Sarehole. Instead I headed back towards the city centre following the river north passing through Cannon Hill Park while the heavens poured down. A cycle path provided me with directions that took me all the way into the city centre while the rain stopped and the sun came out. I am not a city person and much prefer wild scenery, which it seems to me was also how Tolkien felt. He looked back on his time at Sarehole as the happiest in his life and when he returned several decades later he was horrified at the growing urbanisation, which inspired a part of The Lord of the Rings. I didn’t enjoy the city part of this walk, but I did like the wild flowers beside the canal and I especially enjoyed visiting Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog where a little bit of old earth is preserved in the modern day. Curiously this walk has lingered long in my memory despite the poor weather and the prolonged sections of city scenery. I don’t think it will be long before I feel the pull to return to Birmingham and explore more of Tolkien’s childhood home that inspired part of my favourite book.