Month: June 2016

dry-valleys:

Slight return to the Two Saints Way, Friday, with a detour on the Heart of England Way to Castle Ring  from which can be viewed Pye Green (5 on Friday, 6 in March 2016), which I suppose is a fortress itself in its own way, built like the imposing Sutton Common for telecommunications during the Cold War.

 And the famous Rugeley Power Station, now closed as a consequence of “libertarian” “free market” “reforms”. (3,8,9) in April, unless otherwise mentioned on Friday.

My girlfriend was born and bred in Rugeley and though she lives in Birmingham she happened to be on a visit to her parents at that the time. We were thus able to visit the excellent, recommended museum and learn about the hardships that occurred last time a conservative government came to town in the 80s and 90s.

June 5th – Over to Middleton Hall for cake, and a weary return through Tamworth up the canal. Although it was a gloriously hot day, I just wasn’t feeling it and my energy was low, but the scenery really perked me up.

Everything is so green at the moment – from the barley in the fields to the gorgeous limpid canals – and that view of Middleton over the fields never gets old.

A lovely ride, even if I was knackered!

June 4th _ I came back past the Dunstall and Catton Estates. At Dunstall, they’re farming deer, and it’s odd to see these graceful creatures enclosed in such high fences, but they do have a huge amount of space and seem happy. 

Near Catton, the coos were fascinating, and a reminder of how dangerous they can be. I first spotted them wading into the Trent to cool off, but on seeing me, the entire heard made for the hedge where I was standing. Gently insistent, they crowded round, presumably to see if I had food. They are gorgeous animals, but I’m glad the hedge was there!

June 4th – I went to the steam fair at Draycott in the Clay, near Sudbury, and photos can be seen on my main blog here, but on the way back I took a route through Rolleston on Dove.

I haven’t been here for ages. The church is lovely (though impossible to get a good photo of at that time on a sunny evening!) and the village, still resolutely separate from Burton although perilously close, still retains a wonderful atmosphere with some great buildings and the river running right through it.

That lych gate was the site of me repairing a puncture at 7pm one Christmas Eve (I think in 2010) on my home from a chilly century in Derbyshire – it has a light in which proved very useful.

June 3rd – A ride out to Abbots Bromley and Hoar Cross on a lovely afternoon. Right now, the meadows are full of buttercups and absolutely delightful. The Needwood Valley was as beautiful as ever, and Hoar Cross Church as imperious as it ever was.

Great to see the bugle flowers still so prolific in the churchyard.

Jun 2nd – This is a bit of a geeky one for fellow owners of Garmin Edge bike GPS units: I notice now that under the Garmin ConnectIQ brand, there are a selection of installable, free apps to give new screens and data fields for your device. Most of the stuff available is fitness related, and doesn’t appeal to me; but this app – called My Edge – giving an analogue-style speedometer with clever max and average speed implementation, with other data fields configurable, is really nice. It has a slight bug in that elevation related fields display in feet, rather than the labelled meters but it’s cool. You can investigate the My Edge app here.

There are other interesting apps too – another I’ve loaded shows the current OS grid position you’re at, which I find nicely geeky.

Check out the Garmin Connect service here.

June 2nd – Can the concept of ghost signs be applied to commercial vehicles, do you think?

For those that don’t know, ghost signs are the defunct, redundant or barely legible remains of signs on buildings advertising long gone places of companies, and spotting them is quite a thing in some circles. I’ve been passing this red box van in Shelfield for months and wondering.

The legend on it once said ‘Another bun run from: Riverside Bakery – Tel Middlesbro’ 247181 – Tel N’Castle0191 271 4874′ – but it’s since been removed, and only the non-faded shadow of the text remains.

Interestingly (or perhaps not) the bakery seemed to make the news for all the wrong reasons in 2006, but I think it still might exist.

The trivialities I notice when cycling really do trouble me sometimes…

June 2nd – A summer sentry watched my progress through their neighbourhood today. Sat watching the world go by in Walsall, this lovely, shiny coated black cat watched me carefully, making sure both I and the bike were in order. Satisfied I was just passing through, it posed for a photo while watching more interesting things back up the street.

June 1st – A grey morning crossing the still inexplicably closed Bentley Mill Way viewed from the aqueduct on the Walsall/Darlaston border. The roads has, over many months been lowered beneath the bridge to allow taller vehicles, and new signals added. In such a wet area, I hope the drainage pumps are capable and reliable, otherwise we could be in for fun. 

The road has been complete for about a month now, and remained closed as some brickwork was pointed on the bridge, but now seems closed with no activity ongoing. Considering this whole show was due to open ‘Autumn 2015′, it’s all a bit of a puzzle.