BrownhillsBob

#365daysofbiking Taking the Derbyshire hundreds

Friday, October 30th 2020 – There was a weekend of bad weather forecast, so I took the opportunity to get a long ride in – and aimed for a century, to test my fitness.

I achieved 110 miles, and returned to places I’ve not been in some years. I was very pleased, and the ride was exhilarating and beautiful.

It rained a couple of times, and I got wet, but it didn’t matter. Up the A515 to Sudbury, over to Scropton and Hatton, up through Shirley and Hole in the Wall to Hognaston Winn and it’s alien-like navigation beacon via the daunting Madge Hill. Sunset came and followed me up the High Peak Trail from Middleton Top to Parsley Hay, whereupon I headed to Ashbourne on the Tissington Trail in the blackest of nights.

The night run back via Alkmonton, Foston, Tutbury, Barton Gate, Yoxall, Hanch and Chorley was gorgeous and challenging.

Autumn on the trails and lanes of Derbyshire is a bit treacherous, but a fun ride: But as ever, the bleak, beautiful countryside of Derbyshire and East Staffordshire was the star.

It’s great to be back in the game at last. I thought I’d never make it.

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#365daysofbiking Suffocation

Thursday, October 29th 2020 – I had to visit a store at Walsall’s Crown Wharf shipping Centre – a peculiar, strip parade out of town centre that was curiously built in the town centre.

Crown Wharf is awful: Like all parade malls, it surrounds it’s own car park and seems isolated from the town outside, and has sucked the life and larger stores from Park Street a hundred yards away, which is the town’s Main Street.

It’s incredibly brightly lit at night, and the trees on the Wolverhampton Road frontage have lights in all year around, giving a night-time feel of the worst kind of Christmas shopping all year around.

Crown Wharf is one of those odd, turn of the millennium regeneration projects that didn’t regenerate anything much, and seems cursory and contemptuous of it’s host town and environment, almost as if the architects and designers had learned nothing from Merry Hill twenty years before: A mall surrounded by industrial decay that only served to further suffocate the small towns around it.

I did what I had to, and left. I hate this place.

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#365daysofbiking Last of the year

Wednesday, October 28th 2020 – Over in Darlaston, the parks – Victoria and Kings Hill – are gorgeous in their seasonal jackets. I notice there are still beautiful flowers in bloom in the planters at Kings Hill, and the fallen leaves make for lovely colours in these vital, hidden gems.

I will always shout up for the parks in Darlaston: They get very little attention and they are such a lovely part of the town.

A real spirit lifter on the way to work.

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#365daysofbiking Under the cloak of darkness

Tuesday, October 27th 2020 – Another cycleway, beautiful in the autumn night, but very treacherous as I found out, very nearly taking a spill on a corner.

This is the shortcut between the A51 near Beacon Park and Leomansley, a great way of cutting off the Friary island that pops you out further up the Walsall Road, giving a great route through the park when coming back from Lichfield.

The leaf mulch here was very wet and slippery, and despite taking care, my summer tyres still failed to grip as I skirted the anti-vehicle barrier.

Thankfully I held it and no harm done, but a timely reminder that there’s danger in the darkness.

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#365daysofbiking Declining cover

Monday, October 26th 2020 – Back in Telford, I noticed with sadness the cycleways here that are so beautiful in summer with their tree canopy covers are now opening back out as the leaves fall.

People don’t really seem to appreciate how beautiful these routes are – and mostly they’re unmapped. Cycling around Telford is generally a real joy to the heart as a result.

The colours are gorgeous, though, the downside being that the fallen leaves make for a slippery, wheel-stealing challenge to the unwary rider.

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#365daysofbiking Getting the abbey habit

Sunday, October 25th 2020 – I’m enjoying the long rides this autumn, which is making the whole experience of the season much nicer, I must say.

This grey Sunday I wrapped up warm and headed back to the Churnet Valley, and caught the area in a lovely sunset golden hour. On the way I took an alternate route bypassing Willslock and Uttoxeter and found myself passing through Croxden, where the immense and beautiful ruined abbey took me fair by surprise: I must come back and spend time looking around it. I’ve never seen a lane actually run through a set of ruins before…

The Churnet Valley was as beautiful as it tends to be, but I had a different target in mind. Crossing the valley by Lord’s Bridge, up the gorgeous Barbary Gutter and past the dreadful Alton Towers, I pressed up past Star Bank and Threelows, looping back over the Weaver Hills, to catch them just as night fell.

I returned via Ellastone, Marston Montgomery and Sudbury, blasting down the A515 for a fast run home.

Another beautifully autumnal ride that really lifted my spirits.

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#365daysofbiking Shine

Saturday, October 24th 2020 – Another wet day, and it was raining heavily as I nipped out for shopping in the evening.

This weekend, the clocks go back and I hate the loss of evening light with a fierce passion. The wet Saturday just compounded that and I felt miserable.

But something about the lights of the town, the fresh air and sounds of the rain combined and I actually began to find it quite soothing.

The shine of rain at night is very underrated, and it can make the most mundane places beautiful. But also this year I am determined not to be brought down by winter. I must keep on, must keep finding the beauty in the everyday, and try myself to shine through the gloom.

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#365daysofbiking A quiet Chase

Friday, October 23rd 2020 – I had to nip over Penkridge Bank on Cannock Chase for business so I cut across Maquis’s Drive to catch the autumn colour – and wasn’t disappointed.

It’s always a lovely route, and being a Friday, wasn’t very busy. The Chase itself was quiet.

I was on the lookout for interesting fungi but sadly the only example I came upon of note was wooden…

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#365daysofbiking Harsh but beautiful

Thursday, October 22nd 2020 – I’m still ambivalent about the iPhone as a camera. It’s a huge advance in photography without a doubt, but outside of it’s quite narrow comfort zone, you can really tell that it’s relying heavily on software post-processing.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the lauded ‘night mode’.

Here on the canal near Silver Street it took a stunning image on my way home from work – yet look closely and it’s very harsh.

I know I’m expecting way to much from something in an incredibly small package with tiny optics, and it is extraordinary, but the technology still has a very long way to go.

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#365daysofbiking Just resting

Wednesday, October 21st 2020 – Also looking good in the royal blue dusk that’s been coinciding with my evening commute is Coppice Lane, alongside Brownhills Common.

A lonely, quiet and often desolate part of Brownhills, an edgeland populated mainly by silver birch copse on scarred industrial land, it has a ghostly, haunted atmosphere at night.

But in the right light, the sky, trees, road and streetlights combine and make it special.

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