A Year Abroad: Day Two. Birmingham.

I didn't sleep very well this morning, I think because I went to bed relatively early last night, so I woke up super early, which was annoying. I persisted with lying in bed, and finally got up at 8:30am.

I headed back to the train station and spent the morning at the National Motorcycle Museum. It was a pretty cool place. I went as my dad owns a 1940 BSA 250 C11 which he built. The museum didn't have any of those on display, the closest they had was a 1938, but it was nice to look at all of them. There were heaps of Norton's, which I can remember dad talking about when he once gave me a run down on the history of the company, and a lot of Gold stars.

Here's some quick facts on BSA:

- It stands for Birmingham Small Arms company

- Founded in the late 1800's, it began manufacturing guns. Then during the wars, expanded to include things like motorcycles

- BSA was once the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the world

- Norton-Villiers tool over I'm 1973

- The former factories are currently privately owned, and are not looking like being restored

The museum is about 20 minutes by train from the main city. The nearest station is a 20 minutes walk. But it's a ice walk! It's like something out of Midsomer Murders, old massive country houses and big fields. Typical English countryside.

After, back I'm Birmingham, I was aimlessly wandering the shopping streets when I remembered the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. So I spent the afternoon learning about the history of Birmingham. There was also a really interesting exhibition there at the moment, on the Staffordshire Hoard. It's a massive collection of pieces of gold from the Anglo-Saxons from the 400's. It was discovered by an amateur metal detector a few years ago at Staffordshire, and is the only Anglo-Saxon hoard in existence. It was cool reading that there's a legal definition for 'treasure' in Britain (does Australia have a definition for treasure?), and the process a find has to go through to be considered as treasure or just a find (there was a cool word for a regular find, I can't remember it though). All artefacts found, that are more than 300 years old must be reported to local government.

Tomorrow morning, I'm up early for a bus to Cardiff at 6am for a Wale of a time!