Birmingham

Where to base yourself in Birmingham depends largely on how much of the city you plan to see on foot versus by tram or taxi. The City Centre, clustered around New Street station, the Bullring and Victoria Square, is the easiest choice for a first visit or a short business trip: everything from the main museums to the best shopping is within a ten-minute walk, and the area is well served by both upmarket hotels in restored Victorian buildings and reliable international chains. It is also the busiest and, during major events or the Christmas market, the most expensive part of the city to book.

The Jewellery Quarter, a short tram ride or twenty-minute walk from the centre, offers a quieter alternative with genuine character, its converted factories and workshops now housing boutique hotels and independent guest houses alongside the working jewellers that give the area its name. Edgbaston, to the south-west, suits visitors with a car or those planning to spend time at the cricket ground, university or Botanical Gardens, with a more residential, leafier feel than the centre. Digbeth and Southside are worth considering for anyone prioritising nightlife and street food over daytime sightseeing, with the area's warehouse conversions putting guests within stumbling distance of the city's best bars and live music venues.

Whichever area you choose, Birmingham's compact size means nowhere is genuinely inconvenient; the difference is mainly one of atmosphere, and most of the city centre attractions are reachable on foot from any of these neighbourhoods within twenty-five minutes at most.

Birmingham rewards a few days of proper exploring rather than a single whistle-stop afternoon.

• The Bullring and Grand Central — the curved, chainmail-clad Selfridges building is the city's most photographed landmark, and the surrounding markets and malls make for a genuinely good half-day of shopping and people-watching.
• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery — a free, world-class collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings alongside the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest cache of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found.
• The Jewellery Quarter — cobbled streets of working jewellers, independent cafes and the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, a preserved factory frozen at the moment its owners retired in 1981.
• Cadbury World — the chocolate-making visitor attraction at Bournville is aimed squarely at families but remains a genuinely popular day out for adults too.
• Birmingham's canal network — Gas Street Basin and Brindleyplace are the starting point for towpath walks that quietly connect much of the city centre away from traffic.
• The Library of Birmingham — an architecturally striking public library with a rooftop garden and view over the city that costs nothing to visit.
• Edgbaston Cricket Ground — a Test match venue with an atmosphere unlike any other ground in the country, particularly during an Ashes fixture.
• The Balti Triangle — Sparkhill and Sparkbrook's cluster of curry houses, the neighbourhood credited with inventing the Balti dish itself in the 1970s.

Birmingham's most famous culinary export is the Balti, a fast-cooked curry served in the pan it's cooked in, invented in the city's Sparkhill and Sparkbrook restaurants in the 1970s and still best eaten in the Balti Triangle today. The city also has more Michelin-starred restaurants than anywhere in the UK outside London, with Opheem, Adam's and Purnell's all holding stars and showcasing modern British and South Asian cooking.

The Bullring's indoor market and the nearby Indoor Market on Edgbaston Street are good spots for cheaper, more traditional fare, while Brindleyplace and the Mailbox offer canal-side bars and restaurants that make the most of the waterside setting on a warm evening. Digbeth Dining Club brings together street food traders in a converted industrial space and is one of the best casual eating experiences in the city, particularly at weekends. For a drink, the Jewellery Quarter's small bars and the traditional pubs around the Custard Factory both offer a change of pace from the chain bars of the main shopping streets.

Birmingham itself is a dense urban centre with no campsites within the city boundary, but the surrounding countryside of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, much of it within a twenty-minute drive of the ring road, offers a genuinely good spread of options for visitors who prefer canvas or a caravan to a hotel bed. The terrain ranges from the gentle water meadows around Kingsbury Water Park in the north-east to the wooded slopes of the Clent Hills to the south-west, giving campers a choice between lakeside pitches and proper hillside views without ever being more than half an hour from the city centre by car.

The West Midlands climate is temperate and often wetter than the south of England, so waterproof kit and a good pitch with adequate drainage matter more here than in drier parts of the country; sites on higher ground, such as those near the Clent Hills, tend to fare better after heavy rain than those closer to the region's rivers and canals. Wild camping has no general legal right in England outside Dartmoor, so anyone wanting to camp near Birmingham needs to use one of the region's established sites or seek explicit landowner permission; informal camping on canal towpaths or in country parks is neither permitted nor advisable.

The best months to camp near Birmingham run from May to September, when daylight hours are longest and the region's parks and hills are at their most walkable; several sites, including some Camping and Caravanning Club locations, stay open into the autumn and winter shoulder seasons for hardier visitors, though facilities and pitch availability are typically reduced outside the main season.