Spirit of Place: By Tram to Wednesbury

Trams aren't a very Birmingham thing. Apart from the obvious implication that the Motor City with its urban motorways would lean towards road transport there is a historic reason for Birmingham's paucity of trams. In the early years of the twentieth century, bus services were run, by law, as private enterprises. Hence the plethora of competing firms. The only exception to this was where a tram route was planned, and then the council cut run a bus service until the tram was up and running. The City of Birmingham Corporation responded to this by producing the most extravagant and complex plan of proposed tram routes possible, thus leaving the road open for them to run the buses themselves.
It therefore seems rather strange that trams are up and running again. The project was plagued by logistic and planning problems from the start and ironically the route literally revives a previous tram route for much of the line (more at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Metro)
Today I felt the need to go to Wednesbury near Walsall. It was in connection with a spell, so obviously the reasons must remain top secret for the present, but suffice to say that the tram was the way to go. To the person of Pagan leanings, Wednesbury is of itself an interesting proposition:
'The substantial remains of a large ditch excavated in St Mary's Road in 2008, following the contours of the hill and predating the Early Medieval period, has been interpreted as part of a hilltop enclosure and possibly the Iron age hillfort long suspected on the site. The first authenticated spelling of the name was Wodensbyri, written in an endorsement on the back of the copy of the will of Wulfric Spot, dated 1004. Wednesbury is one of the few places in England to be named after a pre-Christian deity.
'Wednesbury is one of the oldest parts of the Black Country. The ending "-bury" comes from the old English word "burgh" meaning a hill orbarrow. So "Wednesbury" may mean "Woden's Hill" or "Woden's barrow". It could also mean Woden's fortification, although the former description is often accepted.' (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesbury)
To the witch, of course, a trip to Woden's hill means at least a cock of the hat to Woden himself, and I made my little sacrifice as part of my spell. In my limited experience of him Woden presides over the initiatory defending of honour, certainly a theme which has been running through my life!