The morning was raw and fog had formed an ethereal shroud over Wolverhampton. There are those who would say this was the best time to visit, before the dubious merits of the “fifth worst city on the globe” could be seen clearly.
Lonely Planet, esteemed in the travel field, rates Wolverhampton the most wretched place in Britain in a hate-list that brackets it with such undesirable spots as Accra and San Salvador. Insults come no harsher than this. You would think even the grounded fatalism instinctive to Black Country folk would be stirred to rebellion.
There was little sign of it yesterday. The mist lifted on Broad Street to reveal the realities of Wolverhampton life - shoppers, head-down in dull anoraks, wading through a sea of slush past a row of boarded-up shops, punctuated only by a pawnbrokers and a nail bar. Female pampering survives even the most dowdy of environments.
Grand buildings loomed over Queens Square but the stately walls of St Peters Church are overdue a steamclean, while an attempt to visit the art gallery found the main door locked, inquiries diverted to a side street. Two burger stalls flanked the entrance to the Wulfrun shopping centre. Inside, buckets were spread across the floor in the hub of the mall. The roof was leaking.
One shop-front was given over to messages from the neighbourhood police - festive messages. “Burglars go Christmas shopping too” a poster warned. In mid-January? Yet the timewarp extended through the streets, Christmas trees and decorations still to be removed.
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The superstitious will say this bodes ill for the city but its residents seem not to mind, any more than they care about the strictures of Lonely Planet. This is an area of stoical habits and expectations that seldom rise above the mundane.
Many still cannot believe that their football team is in the Barclays Premier League. The club shop had a sale on yesterday - “Everything Must Go”. Presumably, it did not include the players.
But here is the thing about Wolverhampton - dig beneath the surface, scrape away the cheap jibes of outsiders and the shoulder-shrugging pessimism of the locals and the city has a sporting heritage to envy. Culturally, it may have produced nothing better than the glam rock of Slade. But Billy Wright, Hugh Porter, Denise Lewis and Tessa Sanderson testify to a more impressive hall of sporting fame.
It was a point well made in mid-afternoon at Dunstall Park. As the city racecourse, the busiest in the land, prepared for yet another meeting, Dave Roberts, the managing director, mused: “I can think of dozens of cities in Britain that haven’t got the sporting history and facilities Wolverhampton has.”
Roberts lived here for five years and empathises with the local attitudes. “Black Country people are just so nice,” he said. “They don’t get upset or easily offended. This Lonely Planet thing had no effect. It’s the same when things go wrong for the Wolves. They just take it on the chin and carry on.”
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Fergus Cameron, the clerk of the course, concurred. “I’m a southerner but we’d only been here a few weeks when I asked my wife if she’d want to move back. She was horrified - said the people up here are so much friendlier.”
This does not make them all model customers. Roberts sighed when asked if the local community supported the racecourse. “They tend to come once a year, for a celebration. Our challenge is to get them to come twice. They’ll go to the dogs because they feel more comfortable there. The historical image of racing is a problem to them.”
More should make the effort. The approach to Dunstall Park is not pretty but, once through the gates, there is much to commend. It has a huge tarmac car park and a hotel on site. It has floodlights - the first in British racing, installed in 1994. It stages racing with dizzying frequency and, as a welcome initiative, admission is free throughout January.
Much of the Polytrack fare, such as the twilight meeting yesterday, is an industry service, especially in a freeze-up. The Levy Board insists that tea-time racing generates more money than winter evenings - though here, they should make a regular exception for Saturday nights.
It is then that Dunstall comes alive, its three restaurants packed with night-outers from as far afield as Liverpool and Manchester. The atmosphere is something so different that racing should embrace and encourage it. “Given the chance,” Roberts said, “we’d race at least every other Saturday night. It works for us.”
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Meantime, the show must go on - five fixtures in six days next week. There will be no more than a couple of hundred present but they are served by ample bars and eateries, not to mention a row of bookmakers snug inside the main hall.
You would not go to Wolverhampton for your holidays and, where the city centre is concerned, Lonely Planet may not be entirely misguided. But for a racing diehard, there is a kind of Utopia at Dunstall Park. The fog descended again last night but, as the city council’s motto says: “Out of darkness cometh light”.