The alternative Seven Wonders: The Midland alternatives to dream spots across the globe

While it’s possible that the Government will create air bridges with low-Covid-19 European nations – it’s not clear that those countries would want to reciprocate, given that we have the worst record in Europe.

More than a month ago, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Britain there was unlikely to be a normal summer holiday season with big, lavish, international holidays scrapped.

So if you were planning that trip in a lifetime to the Grand Canyon, if you were hoping to go diving off the Great Barrier Reef or if you were considering a one-off Alaskan Cruise, the message is pretty simple: it’s off.

At Weekend Towers, we understand the disquiet this will bring.

After all, we’ve also had to postpone our 2020 holiday highlight; a family day out at Dudley Zoo.

However, all is not lost.

And so we’ve scoured the region to come up with an alternative holiday plan.

Follow our Alternative Seven Wonders Guide – although we stopped at six – and you can (pretend) you’re visiting the most fabulous and exciting sights on the planet.

By the time you get to our third recommendation, you might think we’re ‘aving a larff. And you might just be right. Still, if we can’t make ourselves – and you – laugh through Covid-19, we’re not doing our jobs.

Think of us as your magic torch, shining a little light into an otherwise dark time...

Dream Trip – Big Sur

The Big Sur is a rugged mountain section of Route One, in California.

If you’re travelling from San Francisco to Los Angeles, it’s recommended driving – one of the prettiest roads in the world.

This roughly 90-mile-long stretch of redwood-and fog-trimmed waterfront between Carmel-by-the-Sea and Hearst Castle draws you (and writers like Henry Miller and Beat Generation darling Jack Kerouac) in with a magic allure that is almost palpable. This is, quite simply, a place you want to be – bluffs, sea and sky.

The classic drive through Big Sur, along twisting Highway 1, offers plenty of pullovers at places like seen-it-in-a-million-car-commercials Bixby Bridge.

Stop at parks along the coastline and look up to see endangered California condors, North America’s largest birds, or look down to scan the swells for migrating whales or sea otters floating among dense beds of kelp, California’s signature seaweed.

Campgrounds abound, like Big Sur Campground, Fernwood Resort, Riverside Campground, and Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.

The region’s beauty also makes it a magnet for exclusive, splurge-worthy hotels like the cliff-hugging Post Ranch Inn, or luxurious Ventana Big Sur.

Reality – Black Country Spine Road

Okay, so we realise this is a tough sell.

It’s like trying to sell a peaceful house next to a building site where new homes are being built. It’s like trying to persuade a Wolverhampton Wanderers fan to switch to WBA – oh, go on, you’ll never know if you don’t try.

Motorists of West Midlandia, we present to you our very own equivalent of Big Sur – The Black Country Spine Road, so good they named it once.

Winding like a snake between Junction 1 of the M5 and Junction 10 of the M6 – well, almost, it didn’t quite connect – the Black Country Spine Road is a feat of engineering.

Be dazzled by Moxley Junction, stop and take your holiday snaps at the Patent Shaft Roundabout, Instagram your progress at the Albion Roundabout, at Carter’s Green.

Peregrine falcons, western snowy plovers, brown pelicans, ashy storm-petrels, black swifts, and tufted puffins can all be spotted along the Big Sur, depending on the season.

There are also Californian Condors, Turkey Vultures and Pacific Loons – that’s the name of the bird, rather than a description of idiots who drive too fast.

Such sights are nothing, however, against the wildlife to be found near the Black Country Spine Road.

Be amazed by stray cats, swoon at prickly hedgehogs and do a nature project on urban foxes. We thank you.

Dream Trip – Great Wall Of China

It’s bigger than anything Donald Trump could imagine for the southern border of the USA.

It’s steeped in history: The Great Wall was built from as early as 7th century BC while the best known sections were built by the Myng Dynasty between 1368 and 1644.

“He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man”, as what was said by China’s first Chairman Mao Zedong, the Great Wall should be on every traveller’s bucket list.

This China’s greatest engineering triumph, made from brick, stone, tamped earth and wood, is a direct link with legendary dynasties of China’s past as there were continuous ancient dynasties invested unquantifiable labour and material resources to construct and reconstruct the Great Wall.

Nowadays, you can still see there are more than 5,500 miles of the Great Wall snaking its way over the perched mountainsides from the Gobi Desert in northwestern China to the sea coast of far eastern China.

Beijing, the capital city, possesses about 573km (356 miles) of the Great Wall including the world famous Badaling, Mutianyu and Jiankou, stretching alone the steep peaks and hills at its remote northern districts.

Reality – Pig On The Wall, Gornal

We’re quite pleased with this one, even though we say so ourselves.

Though there were numerous walls across Staffordshire, Shropshire and the Black Country that we might have included – including the ‘wall’ that is Wolverhampton Wanderers’ defence, boom boom – we have opted for the region’s finest wall.

Mention Gornal to a Black Countryman and it won’t be long until he says: ‘Where they put the pig-on-the-wall to watch the band go by’.

The legend grew so strong over time that in 1985, the Bricklayers Arms pub, in Kent Street, was renamed The Pig On The Wall.

The folklore dates back to the early 20th century. Captain Webb, of Dawley, in Shropshire, visited Dawley to take part in a procession.

He’d earlier swum across the Channel, in 1875. By 1909, a postcard had been produced of a pig on the wall; the animal being placed on the structure so that it could watch Captain Webb’s procession.

The Pig On The Wall pub, incidentally, was knocked down in 2002 to make way for a McDonald’s restaurant, despite protests.

The pig is remembered by locals every time they order a bacon double cheese burger.

Dream Trip – Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is an immense mausoleum of white marble, built in Agra between 1631 and 1648 by order of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favourite wife.

It is the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world’s heritage.

For its construction, masons, stone-cutters, inlayers, carvers, painters, calligraphers, dome builders and other artisans were requisitioned from the whole of the empire and also from the Central Asia and Iran. Ustad-Ahmad Lahori was the main architect of the Taj Mahal.

An area of 10,400 sq km around the Taj Mahal is defined to protect the monument from pollution.

The Supreme Court of India in December 1996, delivered a ruling banning use of coal/coke in industries located in the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ) and switching over to natural gas or relocating them outside the TTZ.

The TTZ comprises of 40 protected monuments including three World Heritage Sites – Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri.

Among the famous visitors who have called by, are Donald and Melania Trump, Will Smith, Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, Justin Trudeau, Prince William and Catherine, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey.

Reality – Smethwick Mosque

The Jamia Mosque is located in Windmill Lane. Sandwell Council hasn’t introduced a 10,400sq km buffer zone around it to block out pollution.

It has not been visited by world leaders, kings and queens or Hollywood A Listers.

It does, however, have a neat line in positive messages on its website, like this: ‘Do not resent the calamaties that come and the disasters that occur, for perhaps in something that you dislike will be your salvation, and perhaps in something you prefer will be your doom.’

So there we have it.

The Taj Mahal is surrounded by immaculate gardens, the Jamia Mosque has daffodils in spring.

Prayers take place through the day and night and it is described as being a little piece of paradise, right here in Smethwick.

Mind you, you can save a fortune by visiting Smethwick instead of the Taj Mahal.

The closest airport to the Taj Mahal is the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi and flights from London take nine hours and cost £400.

The mosque, in contrast, is a short hop on the 80 or 87 bus, which costs £1.50. Bargain.

Dream Trip – Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower dominates the Champ de Mars in Paris. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the wrought iron lattice tower.

Constructed from 1887 to 1889 as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair, it was initially criticised by some of France’s leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but it has become a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world.

It welcomes around seven million visitors a year and is the most-visited paid monument in the world.

Its construction in two years, two months and five days was a veritable technical and architectural achievement.

“Utopia achieved”, a symbol of technological prowess, at the end of the 19th Century it was a demonstration of French engineering personified by Gustave Eiffel, and a defining moment of the industrial era.

It was met immediately with tremendous success.

Only intended to last 20 years, it was saved by the scientific experiments that Eiffel encouraged, and in particular by the first radio transmissions, followed by telecommunications.

For example, the radio signals from the Pantheon Tower in 1898; it served as a military radio post in 1903; it transmitted the first public radio programme in 1925, and then broadcast television up to TNT more recently.

Since the 1980s, the monument has regularly been renovated, restored and adapted for an ever-growing public.

Over the decades, the Eiffel Tower has seen remarkable achievements, extraordinary light shows, and prestigious visitors.

A mythical and audacious site, it has always inspired artists and challenges.

Reality – Blackpool Tower

Slightly further afield from the Midlands, Blackpool Tower is one of Britain’s best loved landmarks.

Given that we’re able to travel as far as we like in England, during lockdown-not-lockdown, it is but a hop, skip and a jump – alright, fine, a two-hour journey up the M6 and M55.

The venue opened in 1894, where the first visitors stood in awe of the remarkable design, immense scale and ornate decorations.

Even today, as attractions have evolved and developed within the Blackpool Tower, visitors are astounded by the remarkable attraction’s unarguable wow factor.

Eleven different rooms within five amazing attractions around the Tower enable fun for more than 2,000 guests.

The original Blackpool Tower Ballroom was a smaller pavilion opened in August 1894. Its stage was on the south side of the room.

The Ballroom floor measures 120 feet by 102 feet. It comprises 30,602 separate blocks of mahogany, oak and walnut.

Phil Kelsall has played the organ at the Blackpool Tower since 1975. He began playing in the Circus. Phill Kelsall still plays the organ in The Blackpool Tower Ballroom to this day.

The inscription above the Ballroom stage, “Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear”, is from a sonnet by Shakespeare – Venus and Adonis.

Not even the Eiffel Tower can boast that.

Dream Trip – Abu Dhabi Shopping Malls with their own ski slopes

Spacious, modern and air conditioned, Abu Dhabi’s malls are a welcome escape from the summer heat and offer a world of choice when it comes to shopping.

In Abu Dhabi, malls are a place to catch up with friends or for a family outing – and the fun can go on until late at night.

With their imaginative designs and wide range of outlets, shopping malls are perennially popular.

The bigger malls buzz with activity as people meet, eat, pose and parade.

During festive occasions such as Eid or Ramadan, malls are venues for special events such as dance or cultural shows, often featuring international acts.

They also hold numerous raffles, often with huge prizes such as luxury cars or cash.

Reality – Telford Town Shopping Centre

Telford Centre was the proud winner of a Platinum award in the 2019 ‘Loo of the Year’ Ceremony.

The ‘Loo of the Year’ awards have been identifying the best washrooms in Britain since 1987.

Every entry received an unannounced visit from an inspector and was assessed against 101 judging criteria.

Thousands of toilets were judged this year across the 61 separate entry categories of the competition and Telford was proud of its recognition.

Okay, okay, so we realise the opportunity to spend a penny in a platinum loo might not cut it when Abu Dhabi shopping malls probably have toilets actually made from solid platinum, but we take comfort where we find it.

Dream Trip – Manhattan Skyline and the Statue of Liberty

The Manhattan skyline is so beautiful that A-Ha wrote a song about it.

Manhattan is one of the five borough’s in New York City. It is arguably the most famous among them.

Also the financial centre of the world, it is famous for it’s nightlife and the tall buildings.

It has many skyscrapers spread all over the city.

If you go further away from the city, you can see all the skyscrapers standing tall high in the sky. It leads to a beautiful view.

The Statute of Liberty was gifted to New York by France around 1886.

The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882.

Reality – Birmingham, as viewed from Tividale, and the Millennium Pegasus

Brummigem doesn’t quite match up to New York City – it has 76 Michelin starred restaurants, including five with the coveted three stars.

Birmingham, in contrast, has just five, though it does have a huge bull in the middle of the shopping centre.

The Millennium Pegasus is a short drive away, on Scotts Green Island, near Dudley, and it symbolises hope for the future.

Some say it looks like the sort of thing you might find in Sir Elton John’s garden, though it has strong connections with local industry.

The bejeweled plume that crowns the mane was designed and cut at the renowned Stuart glassworks.

The plinth was fabricated locally and represents a rock from Mount Parnassus where Pegasus lived.

Pegasus, incidentally, was also the name given by Ecuador when it launched its own weather satellite.

It didn’t go well, the satellite was damaged by Russian space debris.