BrownhillsBob

#365daysofbiking Purposefully brutal

November 21st – The cycleway between Wellington and Hortonwood was a bit hard to follow and convoluted, but as it happened, quite fun. It took me through variously playing fields for a private school, along a goods rail line, along a major highway (safely on the pavement adjacent) over a huge, bizarre double roundabout system, and also over a complex bridge arrangement at Hadley, which was most interesting of all.

This brutalist, utilitarian construction of tiered walkways, curling ramps and single span bridges reminded me very much of the Joy Division publicity shots from the late 70s in Manchester, or of the Great Charles Street crossing in Birmingham.

The bridges twanged gently as I crossed them, or when HGVs went under. They felt safe, and wide, and the views and design interesting, if stark. I was particularly interested in the nearby towerblock of Brookdale, which seemed to be made from the same Wimpety system build technique as the flats in Brownhills, but with some peculiar twists in the design.

It certainly looks to have been well refurbished.

All in all an interesting ride.

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#365daysofbiking Disturbing the locals

November 21st – I had to visit a client on the far side of Hortonwood in Telford, and since I’m not keen on riding through that huge industrial estate, I stayed on the train to wellington and rode from there.

It was dry, and there was a cycleway all the way there, pretty much, which was a delight if confusing at times.

Autumn made west Hortonwood look gorgeous – it’s a lot more like Stafford Park on this side, leafy and quiet with lots of small units.

I found a trail into the heart of where I needed to be from the residential area called Trench, and on the way up the leaf-covered byway, I was monitored by this delightful member of the local neighbourhood watch.

That’s a splendid set of whiskers.

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#365daysofbiking Bright light and hard surfaces

November 20th – Back at Telford station that evening, I studied more of the architecture visible from Telford Station: The office blocks and roads surely do look fabulous in the gathering night before a very blue sky.

Even that dreadful bridge exhibits a peculiar kind of beauty from the far end of the platform.

Telford gets a lot of stick (often from me, let’s be honest) but it is a remarkable place at night.

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#365daysofbiking Metal guru

November 19th – One of the reasons I was comfortable with the ice and frost was that I now have the winter tyres on the bike.

There’s nothing more painful than coming off on ice on a cold day – everything seems to hurt far more. To keep upright as far as possible I fit Schwalbe Marathon Winter Plus tyres. They’ve an aggressive outer tread loaded with 240 tungsten carbide studs which grip the road through the ice to give purchase even when cornering. There’s a more continuous, subtle central tread which rolls well when at maximum pressure.

Riding these is noisy and harder than normal tyres – but there are no worries about stability – these grip beautifully, like the ice isn’t there at all. They’re also very effective on leaf mulch which I find a lot of this time of year.

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#365daysofbiking Cold comfort

November 19th – Next morning, back to Telford in the early morning on a hard frost, as expected. Mill Green was as beautiful as it always is on such a morning: Icy, pale but mistily serene and peaceful.

It was a good morning for once and that looked like continuing. With the winter tyres on, I’m ready.

Come on then, let’s have it…

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#365daysofbiking That was a bit nippy

November 18th – It was a cold, thankfully dry journey home. The roads were glistening with ice, and the main ones, a fresh scattering of road salt.

The first icy commute home of the winter is always hard. My hands and face were cold. It hurt.

Stopping at a shop in the way home, I noticed that the temperature was marginally still above zero degrees Celsius.

That was a shock. it felt much colder.

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#365daysofbiking A different light

November 18th – If you read this journal regularly, you’ll know I’m not terribly impressed with Telford’s new pedestrian bridge, linking the railway station with the town centre over the line and rTelford ring road.

The bridge itself is an awful design that relies on lifts for wheelchair access and those lifts are highly unreliable. The structure has no rainwater control, and seems like a badly thought out, peculiarly executed piece of civil engineering hubris.

However, I will say this: Like Walsall bus station, at night with the thing lit up, you can kind of see what the architect was getting at.

The lighting in the stairs handrails is a particularly nice touch.

But it’s still a turd you can’t really. polish.

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#365daysofbiking Unkind cuts

November 17th – The Canal and River Trust are still doing their best to piss me off, their talent for which is so prodigious I doubt they actually have to try.

After grumbling a couple of weeks ago at pointless towpath grass cutting up on the Anglesey Branch on the way to Chasewater, I see they’ve been up on the canal through Brownhills too.

They are cutting grass that the hungry waterfowl would have grazed overwinter. a colony of earthstar fungus has been destroyed. Grass mulch now is all over the paths, bunging up the bike and folk’s shoes. Parts of the grass that were formerly lush and verdant are now a cropped mud bath.

Why? Who the hell cuts grass in winter? This is sheer, pointless, piss-poor grounds management, and an utter waste of desperately needed cash.

Please stop!

A canal towpath is a wild place. That’s it’s charm – a rough cut twice a year would be more than enough.

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#365daysofbiking Getting the bird

November 17th – Another rain sodden day. I know this is getting repetitive if you read these posts in series, but this is seriously what life here is like at the moment. It’s been so wet for weeks now that I’ve stopped grumbling at having to go out in it; it’s just a sort of a new normal.

The state of this is weird.

Down in Brownhills on a shopping trip, a wander over to the canalised for a loop over to Walsall Wood. The birds here – gulls, mallards, swans, geese and more – didn’t seem as tired of the rain as me, but they did seem a bit fractious. Maybe they were missing human feeding, which on a normal Sunday would be almost constant here.

I notice the goose with the white feathers on it’s head is still around. It’ll be interesting to track it over the winter, and see if it mates or if the colour discrepancy renders it an outsider…

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#365daysofbiking 25 minutes to go

November 16th – Getting home, I looked at the GPS and noticed sunset – which I hadn’t really been tracking this year at all over much – was now at 4:14pm. I think it tends to peak at about 3:50pm, so I guess we have a further 25 minute slide before things inexorably start to improve – and that’s only just over a month away.

Bring it on!

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