100 British Bus Routes: Route 6
Walsall to Sutton Coldfield
11 February 2024
ABOVE: National Express West Midlands 4864 (BX61 LLG, "Patsy"), an ADL Enviro400, stands in South Parade, Sutton Coldfield, between trips on route 6
to / from Walsall. Pictures in this article taken on Friday 13 January 2023, unless otherwise stated.
to / from Walsall. Pictures in this article taken on Friday 13 January 2023, unless otherwise stated.
Runs: Daily
Operator: National Express West Midlands
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 30 minutes
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: three buses
Off-peak journey time: 38-39 minutes
Estimated route length: 11 miles
Operator: National Express West Midlands
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 30 minutes
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: three buses
Off-peak journey time: 38-39 minutes
Estimated route length: 11 miles
Is it just me or is there something a bit 'space age' about Walsall St Paul's bus station? I think it's the USS Enterprise-shaped roof with its TARDIS roundels:
ABOVE: A quartet of Volvo B7RLE Wright Eclipse 2s belonging to NXWM can be seen in Walsall bus station on Tuesday 30 January 2024. On the extreme left is 2117 (BX12 DFN) on route 29 to Bloxwich. Centre left is 2088 (BX12 DCE) on route 9 to Wolverhampton, and 2129 (BX12 DGY, Peri-Faye), is on the right preparing for the short run to Mossley on route 31. At the back is 2124 (BX12 DGE, Alice Emily) on route 41 towards Willenhall.
One thing I do know is that the bus station is always busy. A succession of buses pass through serving the 11 stands within, whilst a series of other services call at satellite stops on the other side of St Paul's Street. Most of the services seem to be run by National Express West Midlands (NXWM), the main operator here.
Lots of people are milling around for the various services available, including the NXWM 529 service, taking the direct route to Wolverhampton, and seemingly never not busy, despite the efforts of eight double-decker departures each hour to clear the queues.
We're on the northern side of the West Midlands conurbation, nine miles north-west of Birmingham city centre and seven miles east of Wolverhampton. The market here has been running since 1220 AD. About 67,000 people were living in Walsall in 2011, and so many famous people emanate from here that Wikipedia has a separate page just to list them all! This may be part of the West Midlands but it has its own character, including a Victorian arcade in the town centre.
And it's here, at the back of the centre island in the bus station, that NXWM route 6 sets out every half-hour for a destination roughly seven miles south-southeast of here (as the crow flies) - Sutton Coldfield. But we have some lovely territory to cover in order to get there...
There's a Ring Road around the town, and we're not that far from the M6 motorway either, so that may explain why the town centre streets are fairly quiet, admittedly on a weekday lunchtime. It only takes a few minutes to get to the Ring Road, at a fiendishly-complicated junction (see the map here). Fortunately it is controlled by traffic lights so our passage across it is quick and painless.
We pass what I would classify as the "gatehouse" to Hatherton Lake and Walsall Arboretum:
ABOVE: The impressive gatehouse at the entrance of Hatherton Lake and Walsall Arboretum. A Walsall Community Transport minibus waits to cross the Ring Road to head back into the Town Centre whilst working circular town route 22.
Wikimapia tells us that Hatherton Lake was created in the 19th century on the site of former limestone mines. The cost of pumping water from the mines became too expensive, and the decision was made to cease mining on the site, and to allow the mines to flood. This is the result. The arboretum, of which the lake is officially a part, is a Victorian public park covering over 80 acres, and reportedly home to over 10,000 species of tree and shrub.
The whole area to the north of Walsall town centre is very 'green'. Wander on eastwards from the Arboretum and you will come to "Cuckoo's Nook and the Dingle", a nature reserve, and south-east of that is the Barr Beacon Local Nature Reserve.
We initially head north-east for half a mile before turning eastwards onto Mellish Road, where modern blocks of flats jostle with older three-storey houses that have been converted into flats. But then we're out into open countryside with Nature Reserves on both sides.
We come into the Pool Green suburb of Aldridge, with its semi-detached houses and bungalows.
ABOVE: NXWM is still running some Dennis Trident Alexander ALX400s from the early 2000s, such as this 2003 model, seen in Walsall Road, Pool Green, Aldridge.
And so into Aldridge itself. Originally a small agricultural settlement, the coal and clay in the area turned it into a 19th-century industrial town of collieries and brickworks.
Paralympian Ellie Simmonds OBE grew up here, and there's a gold letterbox in the town to commemorate her double-Olympic Gold at the 2012 London Olympic Games (a feat she had already achieved at the 2008 Beijing Games, when she was only 13 years old).
ABOVE: NXWM 4736 (BV57 XJA, Lily May), is an ADL Enviro400. It is seen here in Anchor Road, Aldridge, on Tuesday 30 January 2024.
The former Avion Cinema, opened in 1938 and closed in 1967, stands here. After its life as a cinema it became a Bingo Hall, until this too closed in 2009. It has now been turned into a Wetherspoon public house, but the distinctive frontage has been retained for its third 'career'.
From Walsall, up to this point, route 6 is paralleled by route 7 (a joint quarter-hourly service is provided), but the two routes go their own way from here, with the 7 heading off to Castlefort, a northern suburb of Aldridge.
ABOVE: NXWM 4566 (BU04 BHY), an almost 20-year-old Dennis Trident Alexander ALX400, calls in at Anchor Road, Aldridge on its way to Walsall, on 30 January 2024.
We head eastwards and briefly leave the West Midlands connurbation for Staffordshire.
ABOVE: This is on the Aldridge Road, just across the border into Staffordshire (the actual border being at a traffic roundabout behind us). You can tell that we have already crossed the border because of the Staffordshire bus stop flag at the Fotherley Brook Road stop in the foreground.
This is clearly a very affluent area; the houses are getting bigger and there is at least one car in every driveway - and on a weekday lunchtime, with people out at work, these are probably the 'spare' vehicles! As we head through the locale of Shenstone, I reflect that the scope for any modal shift around here is decidedly limited.
Then the houses briefly cease, and we're once again in open countryside, until we reach the edge of Little Aston.
ABOVE: Near Little Aston Hall Drive, on the Aldridge Road
After about 1.6 miles of Staffordshire, which has not generated any customers on or off, we're crossing back into the West Midlands at Rosemary Hill Road.
Interesting that the only major bus service through this section of Staffordshire is provided by NXWM (there are a couple of school services - also provided by NXWM - including one to the St Francis of Assisi Catholic Technology College in Walsall that runs under what feels like a slightly unfortunate route classification of SFA1).
It's now a drive along the Walsall Road for the next mile. We're now officially into the environs of Sutton Coldfield, just over two miles from the Town Centre as the crow flies.
ABOVE: The Crown Public House sits on the Walsall Road at its junction with Four Oaks Common Road
We have one final detour to make. We turn left off the main road at the Four Oaks War Memorial junction, to head down Belwell Lane to Mere Green, where we will turn right onto Lichfield Road. The road we have left, now called Four Oaks Road, seems more countrified than Lichfield Road, so it's probably a good move to make this brief detour, to get closer to the potential customer base (Four Oaks Road does not have any buses).
ABOVE: Belwell Lane
We reach the centre of Four Oaks and pass the station of that name, on the line from the centre of Birmingham to Lichfield Trent Valley.
ABOVE: Four Oaks railway station. Note the unusual station name signage, pointing towards the platform ends, continental-style, rather than towards the sides
We also pass the Four Oaks Methodist Church, opened in 1903.
Four Oaks Road and Lichfield Road come together here, as we reach the last mile of the journey into the town centre.
Sutton Coldfield is officially the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, following the granting of a Charter by King Henry VIII in 1528. Technically the town's royal status was lost in 1885 or 1886 (depending what you read) when the town was replaced by a municipal borough, which was not recognised as a Royal Borough.
The Royal status was reaffirmed by the Government in 2014, following a two-year campaign, when the Minister for Cities, Greg Clark MP, told the House of Commons that there was "no statutory prohibition for the use of this historic title".
The focal point for bus departures from Sutton Coldfield is Lower Parade, adjacent to the main shopping centre. Buses on route 6 do a quick circuit around the town one-way system, so that they can terminate on South Parade and be facing the "right way" to get out of town again.
ABOVE: Lower Parade in Sutton Coldfield - surprisingly bereft of buses at the point of this photograph (although this picture was taken from the top deck of one)! Buses on route 6 pick up on the opposite side of the road to head back to Walsall.
And that's the end of the journey - just under 40 minutes end-to-end (late night trips do it in half-an-hour). But what a delightful ride through leafy country lanes, and affluent neighbourhoods. Anyone who thinks that the West Midlands is built-up and crowded should have a ride on the number 6 to see how far that is from the truth in these outer suburbs!
ABOVE: NXWM 4736 again, in Walsall Bus Station, on 30 January 2024.
FOOTNOTE: There are no fewer than four services operated by NXWM that run as route 6, so make sure you go for the correct one:
- Walsall - Sutton Coldfield
- Wolverhampton - Wobaston
- Dudley - Stourbridge
- Birmingham - Solihull