Wolverhampton stands at the north-western edge of the Black Country, a constellation of towns - Dudley, Walsall, West Bromwich, Sandwell, Bilston - so densely packed with coal pits, foundries and forges in the 19th century that the smoke turned the daytime sky an industrial dusk. The name is unsentimental and accurate. Wolverhampton was the regional market and meeting point, a wool town that retooled itself for iron and never quite slowed down. The economy today still leans on engineering and a significant aerospace cluster, but the bones of the older trades poke through. You can walk from the city's high street to canal towpaths in twenty minutes, then follow them past lock flights and former wharves all the way to Birmingham, fifteen miles south-east, on the Birmingham Main Line Canal.

On a winter Saturday the city's centre of gravity shifts north to Molineux Stadium, home of Wolverhampton Wanderers - one of the twelve founding clubs of the English Football League in 1888, and English champions three times in the 1950s under Stan Cullis. Wolves play in old gold and black, colours so distinctive that the kit alone is a small piece of municipal identity. The walk to Molineux on match day is a study in Wulfrunian sound: brass-band chants from supporters' coaches, the smell of frying onions outside the Hayward's Bar, and at kick-off the deep rolling roar that gives the ground its reputation as one of the loudest in the Premier League.

Wolverhampton's live music scene has long punched above its weight. The Civic Hall and Wulfrun Hall (rebranded together as The Halls), the Slade Rooms, and the Robin 2 in Bilston have hosted three generations of British and American touring acts - and on certain nights the music programmed inside is Northern Soul, the all-night dancefloor cult that grew up in the Midlands and north-west of England in the late 1960s and 70s. The DJs spin obscure American soul 45s, the dancers throw spins and back-drops, and the drinks remain non-alcoholic - that was always the deal. The scene gave Wolverhampton a sound and a stamina that other English cities still try to import.

Eating in Wolverhampton starts and often ends with a curry. The city has a deep Indian and Bangladeshi food tradition; Bilash Tandoori on Cheapside has collected national awards, and the curry houses around the city centre keep filling on weekend nights. The pub culture is equally serious. CAMRA pubs - the Combermere Arms on Tettenhall Road, the Newhampton in Whitmore Reans, the Great Western tucked behind the railway station - pour cask ales from the Black Country's own breweries. For something between worlds, the old Beatties department store on Victoria Street rose through the 20th century into a Midlands institution, the kind of place where you bought your first suit and your grandmother's tea set.

Wolverhampton's geography rewards leaving. A short drive west crosses the M54 and opens into Shropshire - the Iron Bridge at Ironbridge Gorge, the half-timbered market town of Bridgnorth on its dramatic sandstone cliff, the deer parks of Weston. The city's own green lung, West Park, is a complete Victorian set piece of 1881: bandstand, conservatory, boating lake. From there it is twenty minutes to the canals at Aldersley Junction, where the Birmingham Main Line meets the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, and the towpath continues into the open countryside almost without a road in sight.