Birmingham Christmas Market

[Namechange10003]

Hello! So, apologies for the dull thread.

We are off to Birmingham Xmas market best month. Someone is giving us a lift and I wondered if anyone could advise a good drop off point they can stop for 5 minutes please? (We have a wheelchair to unload so can't jump out at lights etc).

Would it be best to get a tram from the outskirts? Or is there somewhere in the city we can stop?

I don't know Birmingham very well at all.

You could go to New Street station car park. I think there’s 20 minutes free parking in the actual parking multi-storey and there’s also a little drop and go point next to it which you could use. It’s quite close to the Christmas market too.

Echo the station drop off point, I’ve dropped people off there before and it’s been straightforward :)
For the wheelchair user, there’s a little bit of uphill to get to the market. If this is an issue, you can go into the station/grand central, get the lift up to the first floor, with all of the restaurants, then exit via the ramp (by Tiger) :)

Last time I had to walk through Birmingham Christmas Market it was absolutely heaving. There was a one way system in place so if you wanted to go back to a stall you had passed you had to go all the way round the block. It was also full of drunk idiots swigging beer and mulled wine. Not at all sure it would be pleasant to try to manoeuvre a wheelchair through the crowds..... Do your research as to how crowded it is likely to be when you want to go.

Thank you all for the advice. Completely forgot about the train station!

Thanks also for the wheelchair advice. Will do a bit of research and perhaps do a mid week trip!

Personally I wouldn’t bother. It’s quite big and can be very crowded with many duplicates of the same stall, selling tat. There is no real pre-Christmas charm. I ran the gauntlet of it morning and afternoon in November and December 2019, getting back and forth to the station. I’m sure there are nicer Christmas trips you could do. I wouldn’t fancy negotiating a wheelchair round it either.

If you still need input I can ask one of the organisers of the market if they had any advice. Just let me know.

Have to agree that it's not the most festive of markets. It's the same stalls over and over again and although there was no one way system last year it wasn't very inspiring tbh.

You should be able to stop and offload in any of the side streets on the colmore row side of the city which are easily accessible from the Aston expressway (a38). They have chargeable parking monitored by inspectors but it would be fine to offload. Easy walk to the market then, and usually there’s an extra market near the cathedral on colmore row (which doesn’t have the repetitive stalls someone mentioned that the German market does!) I don’t agree that it isn’t festive though! My only issues are it’s too busy and the ham roll stall isn’t there anymore!