AREA LOKAL

You can shop to your heart's content at the revamped Bullring and Grand Central shopping centres in the city centre, 25 minutes away by road or rail. Browse at more than 200 stores, including John Lewis and Selfridges. Take home a designer dress or a hard-to-find whisky from the Victorian Great Western Arcade, or pick up something that sparkles from the craftsmen of the Jewellery Quarter. .

Get a taste of the sweet life at the Cadbury World chocolate factory, half an hour's drive from the hotel. You can take a virtual roller coaster ride in the 4D cinema, play digital games and ride through a Willy Wonka-style cartoon landscape in a Beanmobile. Discover how chocolate is made and, last but certainly not least, pick up a little something to take home from the enormous shop.

Football fans can cheer on local team Walsall at Bescot Stadium, 3 miles from the hotel. The Hawthorns of West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers' Molineux are within eight miles. Aston Villa and Birmingham City's stadiums are not much further. You can catch games from August until early May. In summer when there's no football, it's only 15 miles to the Test cricket ground at Edgbaston.

Discover the Midlands' proud industrial heritage at the open-air Black Country Living Museum, 20 minutes' drive from the hotel. You can go underground into a convincing Victorian mine, and watch bakers and blacksmiths at work in original 19th-century buildings. Don't miss the chance to see the spooky limestone caverns under Castle Hill, on a boat trip run by the adjoining Dudley Canal Trust.

• National Exhibition Centre
• National Indoor Arena
• Villa Park Football Stadium (Aston Villa)
• Walsall Football Stadium
• International Convention Centre
• Dudley Zoo
• West Midlands Safari Park
• West Bromwich Albion Football Club