Welcome to my guide to spending a perfect caffeinated weekend in Birmingham. My family is from the West Midlands but I didn't spend a lot of time in Brum growing up. I've been remedying this in recent years — often when en route to Wolverhampton Wanders matches. On these stops, I prioritise specialty coffee and food (in that order) but a long weekend in Brum a few months ago inspired me to create this itinerary. Read on for industrial heritage, quirky museums and plenty of great places for food and coffee — and there's a map and downloadable one-page cheatsheet at the end!

Perch Bakery is a beautiful new cafe in Birmingham that serves specialty coffee, creative brunch dishes and exquisite pastries. I indulged in all three of these when I paid a visit to Perch en route to Wolverhampton on Saturday and I was very impressed.

“Oh, that’s where we got our wedding rings,” my mum said when I told her which Birmingham neighbourhood I’d visited on Saturday. That made a lot of sense given that it was the Jewellery Quarter but these days you’re as likely to find coffee rings as wedding rings — especially if you drop into Quarter Horse’s new espresso bar.

Regular readers will know that my family hail from the Black Country. And I've been spending even more time in Wolverhampton over the past two years since Wolves tickets became easier to obtain. When I've needed a coffee stop, I have tended to break my journey in Birmingham, visiting spots like Quarter Horse and Faculty. Well, perhaps Wolverhampton speciality coffee shops are like buses because two of them have now come along in quick succession.

UPDATE: Sadly, as of August 2023, Quarter Horse's Bristol Street location has closed permanently. But you can still visit their espresso bar and roastery in the Jewellery Quarter.

My specialty-coffee-shop-hopping continues to turn up surprise connections and today's post is about my return visit to Quarter Horse Coffee on Bristol Street. The connection is that, as you may have seen if you follow me on Instagram, I stopped by Peloton Espresso the weekend before — which itself occupies the former site of Quarter Horse's now-defunct Oxford cafe, which I visited many times.

While back in the West Midlands earlier this month, I was able to visit a second speciality coffee shop in Birmingham before catching my train home. And like Tilt, Faculty is based in a historic arcade close to New Street station.

[Update July 2025: Sadly, Tilt has now closed permanently; a great loss to the Brum specialty coffee scene.]

En route to Molineux Stadium to watch Wolves play a friendly against Spanish team Celta de Vigo last weekend, I broke my journey in Birmingham. I had to leave home very early during a torrential downpour and was in dire need of more coffee by the time I got to Moor Street station. Luckily, I knew exactly where to go: Tilt, a speciality coffee shop, craft beer bar and pinballeria in Birmingham's historic City Arcade, which my fellow coffee blogger Brian recently wrote about again on the Coffee Spot.

"I didn't know Lichfield until I came to Melbourne," said one of the regular customers at Melbourne in Lichfield on Saturday morning. The coffee is impressive at Melbourne in Lichfield, a small speciality coffee shop tucked away down an alley — laneway in Melbourne lingo — in the titular south Staffordshire town. But it was the sense of community that Melbournite owner Deb Pease has created around her Bolt Court bolt hole that impressed me even more. Even on a cold, rainy winter's morning, regular customers were queuing up outside the kiosk for the coffee, cruffins and conversation, served up in equal measures.


My family comes from the Black Country town of Walsall, and although we used to drive the ten miles northeast to Lichfield quite often when visiting our relatives, it has been several years since my last trip to the small cathedral city. As such, I wasn't expecting to find any speciality coffee and had brought my Aeropress with me on my visit last weekend, but a quick Google search soon brought up Melbourne in Lichfield, which happened to be a two-minute walk from our hotel. Between the five of us in our family, we got through about 15 hot drinks in two days — a sign of how much we liked the place.



Melbourne in Lichfield is located about halfway along an alley that runs from bustling Market Street to the Bird Street car park in Lichfield town centre. The diminutive space is more of a large kiosk than a cafe, but there are a few stools (replete with blankets, as we're not really in Melbourne anymore, Toto) underneath the overhang where you can perch to enjoy your coffee and chat with Deb and the other friendly baristas. There is Melbourne-laneway-inspired graffiti art on the walls, and reusable cups for sale in Melbourne in Lichfield's distinctive black and yellow colours. They have also worked with local businesses to try to encourage people to use reusable cups wherever possible (the Union-branded takeaway cups are also compostable).



The house espresso — and Deb's favourite (it even says so on the hopper) — is Union's Rwandan Maraba, which I enjoyed as a piccolo and as a V60 pourover. The bright, fruity coffee had lovely redcurrant notes that came through both in the espresso-based drink and the filter coffee. It's a really drinkable coffee and I can see why it has proved so popular. V60 and Aeropress aren't technically on the menu, but if you are in the mood for a filter coffee, the team are happy to brew one up for you.


During my visit, the guest espresso was a DR Congo Idjwi Island coffee from Wiltshire-based roasters Girls Who Grind. Described variously by Deb as "fierce AF" and "the boldest coffee I've ever tried," the coffee had particularly delicious marmalade notes when I tasted it as an espresso. It was nice too with milk, although perhaps slightly less fierce.



I don't normally go for non-coffee lattes but Deb made me a shot of their turmeric latte, which surprised me pleasantly with its smooth but spicy, gingery flavours. But if you want a more decadent treat, don't leave without trying one of the cruffins (croissant muffins). The chocolate button and salted caramel one I tried was delicious, and my sister-in-law was a big fan of the lemon curd flavour.


More exciting still, a second, larger Melbourne in Lichfield location will soon be opening on Bird Street. This one will have indoor seating and a brew bar and Deb hopes it will become another community hub. One of the best things about the job, she says, has been surprising local customers with a really good cup of coffee. And better still, the customers want to know why the coffee tastes so different — and so much better — than coffee they have drunk in the past. It's this sense of inclusivity and the complete lack of coffee snob-ism that makes Melbourne in Lichfield such a special place. I can't wait to go back and to visit the brew bar when it opens — I might even try to bring my pony!


Melbourne in Lichfield. 2 Bolt Court, Market Street, Lichfield, WS13 6LA. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram.

UPDATE (April 2018): When I returned to Lichfield for a brief visit in early April, I was able to visit Melbourne in Lichfield's newly opened coffee bar at 32/34 Bird Street, and to say hi to Deb and Andrew. I posted a few pictures on Twitter and Instagram, and hope to be back again soon on our next family visit to Lichfield.

During my recent weekend trip to stay with friends in Leicester, I wasn't expecting to have time to check out many coffee shops. Nor did I have any time to do any research, but having enjoyed an espresso from Leicester-based St Martin's Coffee Roasters at this year's London Coffee Festival, I did have at least one café on my list — and one that is relatively close to both the train station and my friends' house.

Despite my life-long interest in 15th- and 16th-century English history — a passion I inherited from my dad — I had never managed to visit the city of Leicester, whose connection with the Plantagenet king Richard III has been in the news fairly regularly over the past few years, displaced only by a certain football team. My only previous visit to Leicestershire was when I did my PADI Open Water training in the murky quarry of Stoney Cove back in 2002, so it was high time I returned to the county.

For the first time in several years — and for the first time intentionally for almost a decade — I'm spending this Christmas in the UK, but there has still been plenty of travelling, from London to Oxford and then up to the Black Country and back to see my extended family. Sunday night was spent in the Walsall Premier Inn — where you get a discount for a room with a 'view' — before spending yesterday, which would have been my grandfather's birthday, with my grandma.

Regular readers will be aware that I have a tragic genetic condition: the chronic, if low-level, affliction of supporting a consistently disappointing football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers. My family are from the Black Country and although for some time, there was a Wolves–Walsall divide among us, we are now all Wolves supporters, in name, at least. We used to go to matches quite often but I haven't been for a few years. Last year, though — the last season in the team's latest run in the top flight — my parents had season tickets and so we all went along to watch them play Charlton today. We even got the same seats they had last year, although as they were right at the back near the goal line, this probably wasn't too difficult.

One girl, two shirts; our stand, the Billy Wright stand

After a morning visiting various grandparents, we had lunch at Beatties, the local department store whose cafe is decorated in Old Gold and black, the team colours. I had some mediocre fish and chips and then it was match time. I don't like wearing old gold, orange or yellow, but had been parent-pressured into wearing a spare home shirt of my mum's. Luckily, there were plenty of retail opportunities at the Wolves Megastore, where I managed to acquire an away shirt in a more flattering shade of teal.

Clockwise from top left: quality meerkat merchandise in the Megastore, match-day programme, Wolves pie, fun & games in the programme

As for the match, well, it was pretty standard Wolves fare. We were doing well, scored early, dominated the first half, and then fell apart in the second half, letting in a goal, and failing to take advantage of a number of shots on target. Charlton were playing dirty: they made 12 fouls compared to our five. I was slightly disappointed that the stands were relatively empty—the gate was about 22,000 out of a 36,000 capacity, but since the relegation from the Premier League, attendance has dropped considerably. We were next to the rowdy South Bank, behind the goal, and I was hoping for some good songs or chants from them but morale seemed pretty low; no one really seems to care what happens now that we are only in the Championship. There wasn't much cheering and there was a mass exodus from around the 85-minute mark.

Goal! (Yes, ours: Sako, 12 mn)

It was a fun day, anyway, although very chilly in the stadium, and maybe the experience will encourage me to pay a bit more attention to my team's performance this season. And now that I'm a south Londoner, maybe it was for the best that we didn't win, given that I was still wearing my Wolves shirt when I got off the bus in SE16 this evening.

There is something about supporting Wolverhampton Wanderers that is remarkably comforting: they rarely fail to disappoint in bringing about utter disappointment. Since our relegation from (the then) Division 1 in 1984, we have only spent one season in the top flight (the unfortunate 2003–4 season, where we "weren't quite ready to be promoted").

Pretty much every other season, we make a strong start but then, around the halfway mark, mediocrity takes over once again and the scoresheet brings records draw after draw. One season we were nine points clear at the top in February and yet by May, we were fighting for relegation!

And now, here we are, near the end of another season that started off so promisingly but has been plagued by inconsistency and a terrible goal difference. After yesterday's win at QPR, we are 5th in the Championship with one match to play — we will probably end up in the play-offs but we are never any good in the play-offs (too much pressure).

This report from The Sunday Times says a lot really: "If they win at Leicester next Sunday, they will be guaranteed a chance to end a season of inconsistency in style." And that's Wolves, really: consistently inconsistent.