Birmingham

Birmingham is a city in England. It is served by four motorways ‒ the M6 comes from the M1 to London at Rugby up to Liverpool and Manchester, the M5 heads to the south-west and Bristol and the M42 goes to Tamworth and Leeds on the M1 north. The M40 heads to London and Oxford. The M5, M6 and M42 all form a box around the city. The A38(M) (better known as the Aston Expressway) gets traffic in and out of the city centre and on to the M6 at the infamous Spaghetti Junction.

Near to Birmingham are the cities of Coventry, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Tamworth and Telford.

Hitchhiking out
 Birmingham has two service stations in the city Frankley to the west and Hopwood Park to the south. Hilton Park, Tamworth and Corley are not too far away.

North towards Manchester, South towards Bristol
The Frankley Service station can be accessed easily, by taking the bus #22 (1.70£ from the center), getting off at the final destination (Kitwell). From there, it is only a short walk to the motorway, following the road you came on and turning right. There is a bridge, so you can get a lift to either northern and southern directions. On the service station, you can't ask around the petrol station (because of "health and safety"), so your best bet is asking people as they go into and out of the resting area.

Birmingham also has an airport and a railway station in the city centre. The National Exhibition Centre (NEC) is another good place to hitch from, it is close to both the motorway and the airport and is widely visited by car drivers.

You might actually be able to hitch out of Birmingham on the M6 from the Spaghetti junction - there is a space where cars can pull over, although they are going quite fast and in two lanes, and police are going past quite frequently. This might be an option if you're really skint, as the junction is quite central. Another option are the petrol stations around Junction 2 on the M5, however there are two and the only reasonable spot for going South atopia found is on the traffic lights from the ASDA petrol station that gets relatively little southbound traffic.

isin: West Midlands trash:Birmingham