Spaghetti Junction – A Different Viewpoint

Spaghetti Junction – a walk around the unseen areas beneath the M6

I worked in Birmingham for twenty years and used the Gravelly Hill interchange, aka Spaghetti Junction, hundreds of times. I never really thought about what it might look like from underneath until I was looking for a photography location for a spare morning in Birmingham a few weeks ago. I was with my friend Bob and we were both intrigued by the idea.

Under Spaghetti Junction – how to get there

Some more research suggested that the “way in” via a suitable public footpath was only ten minutes’ walk from Aston railway station, which itself was only half an hour by train from where we were staying in Oldbury. You turn left out of the station onto Lichfield Road and then after 100m turn left onto Sutherland Street following it round onto Aston Hall Road . Cross over the roundabout and take the footpath to Aston Reservoir.

Under Spaghetti Junction – making a circular walk

It’s not difficult to find your way around. The public footpath heads past the west end of Aston Reservoir and then over the River Tame before turning right through a forest of concrete pillars under the Aston Expressway and then under the multiple layers of the M6 and its slip-roads, past the maintenance engineer’s facilities and on to the Lichfield Road bridge over the Tame Valley Canal. Just before this bridge there is a flight of steps down to the canal level and you turn sharp left along the canal towpath in a North Westerly direction back under the M6, under the railway bridge carrying the line that serves Gravelly Hill, and then to an old canal bridge where the towpath swaps sides. After this point the motorway and the canal part company and the area under the M6 is less interesting. We turned back to the point where the M6 crosses the canal and there is a path that turns off the towpath and cuts back West and then South West to go alongside the railway line and bring you back to the west end of the reservoir.

*The River Tame – the footpath mentioned in the text visible on the left between the concrete pillars*

Under Spaghetti Junction – what’s there?

Underneath the junction there are ongoing civil engineering works maintaining the structure, Portakabin offices, car parks and lots of folks with high-vis jackets and hard hats – you won’t be on your own apart from perhaps along the towpath – just the occasional angler. The traffic noise is relentless and loud as you would expect. You are dwarfed by the dozens of concrete pillars of different shapes and heights, and the roads going in every direction stacked one above the other high above your head. At this time of year the low winter light slants in to pick out details in the structure and bring out the texture in the surfaces.

We were lucky with blue sky and a low late November sun that reached in under the structure to produced interesting shadows and picked out details here and there. Overall, it was an amazing couple of hours with an abundance of photo opportunities covering brutalist industrial engineering, unexpected pockets of greenery and water, plenty of urban grit and graffiti, and along the Tame Canal some surprising tranquillity and mirror like reflecitions.

*Looking back along the canal under the railway bridge towards Lichfield Road*

Under Spaghetti Junction – macro opportunities

There is probably nothing else like it in the UK with the same amount of public access and variety of subject matter all in such a small area. I am looking forward to making another visit when the opportunity arises. I will have a macro lens with me next time for all those textures and abstract compositions in the corroded steel, peeling paint, moss, concrete and graffiti.