I was unable to go to the HMV in Birmingham's bullring (because Peter Andre was there signing copies of his new single) and was recommended to try the Fort in Castle Bromwich as this had a large HMV and other shops for last minute holiday stuff.
The Fort is an out of town shopping centre and situated off the M6. It was relatively easy to get to by car but I am not sure how good the public transport links are - I saw one bus stop on the way there and there are no train stations near by.
There is a large car park and parking is free. The shops are not under one building and are all in a row in a sort of large three quarters square shape. There is a covered walkway where you have to walk to get to one shop to another. The shops are mainly made up of the Arcadia Group i.e. Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, BHS etc and there is a good range of high street women's fashion shops such as Warehouse, Next, Miss Selfridge and New Look. There was also a Marks & Spencer and a small Debenhams, HMV, WHSmith, JD Sports and Carphone Warehouse. Towards one end of the row of shops there is a Nandos and a Starbucks and a couple of other eateries.
The main advantage of the Fort is that the shops are opened until 8.00pm so it was handy to pop in after work. Another advantage of shopping in the evening is that there a fewer people and I was served quickly and was able to get around extremely easy. The shops are all outward facing with its name on the front and it was easy to walk from shop to shop. The stores themselves were large and stocked the current fashion trends and not last season's fashion.
There is a late night shopping evening on Thursdays when shops are opened until 9.00pm and the shops are opened at the weekends until 7.00pm on Saturday and 5.00pm on Sunday.
This is a good place to shop in the evening if you want to avoid the crowds but I have not been during the day so cannot comment on what the crowds are like, especially on a Saturday. It is not the place for any designer clothes shopping and I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed shopping here if it had been raining.
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Sep 17th, 2009
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