March 13th – Coming back up Brownhills High Street I encountered more than the usual share of morons. It was clearly drive like an idiot day, and yet again I appear to have missed the memo. This vehicle – operating as part of Walsall’s Ring and Ride service, the transport provider for people with limited mobility. Is the driver trying to increase the customer base? Note they’re already indicating left when they overtake. Idiot. And yes, my lights were on…
DX10GXS, 6:20pm, March 13th 2011.
March 13th – Chasewater was great tonight. It was slightly chilly, but there was a lovely, hazy softness to the sunset that was really captivating. I swung round the dam works via the bypass path and headed over the boardwalk to Fly Bay. The really great thing about this place is that I keep finding bits of it that I didn’t know existed. Halfway over the bay, I found this boardwalk bridge and steps, leading to the bench and fingerpost overlooking the north shore. I hoped to see some deer on my return over the heath and down the railway causeway, but sadly even the cows were in hiding. A lovely end to the day.
March 13th – Not far today, as I had other things to do, but I did get in a circuit of Chasewater and Brownhills at sundown. I optimistically approached via the canal, hoping the barriers had not been replaced, but sadly, they had. I did notice something interesting, however. Bob the boat, which reader Roger ‘Ziksby’ Jones had noted a few weeks ago up by Longwood Junction was now at Anglesey Basin. I’m sure I’ve seen the narrowboat at Hopwas and maybe Shugborough too. It certainly gets about a bit.
March 12th – I was amused by this wonderful piece of driving at Rushall Square, just north of Walsall, yesterday. Not dangerous, but a symptom of someone not concentrating, one wonders what was going through his mind. Didn’t seem to be on the phone, either, which is the usual cause of this kind of thing.
March 12th – It’s always hard seeing an old friend in reduced circumstances. I’ve been captivated for years with the cold-war mystique of Birmingham’s Post Office Tower. A symbol of an age where microwave transmission was the bandwidth king, the internet and fibre optics have rendered the cold-war microwave backbone – of which this was a node – irrelevant. Towers down the length of the UK, from Kirk O’Shotts to Pye Green, Sutton Common to Copt Oak are all gradually being decommissioned and relegated to minor supporting roles in the communications infrastructure. Birmingham’s tower is now almost totally devoid of antenna. Underneath it, sits a largely mothballed, part flooded nuclear-blast proof telephone exchange, called Anchor, after the city’s hallmark. A sad monument.
March 12th – Half at work, half not. Just doing a few bits and pieces that matter, then going my own way for a few days. Today, I popped to Darlaston for an hour or two at lunchtime, then headed off on the canal to Birmingham. The sun came out, and Birmingham and the Black Country performed beautifully. Anyone who says this place is ugly hasn’t looked. This is a gorgeous place, and I want to shout it from the rooftops. Up yours, London…
March 11th – Rugeley power station remains hugely influential to me. I love it, it’s monolithic presence, its almost solitary standing, and sheer, unabated, industrial muscle. Renovated, and with exhaust gas cleaning plant now installed, it’s the cleanest coal-fired station in the UK. Its flue stack, which is the tall, slender chimney – held (and probably still does) the record for the tallest continuous wet cast concrete structure ever made. This is a new one, built when the station was upgraded in 2009. I’m in awe of this place, and today, despite the warm spring day, it seemed that both turbines were running full tilt.
March 11th – The encroaching spring doesn’t trouble the fallow deer at Penkridge Bank, Cannock Chase much. Here rain or shine, winter or summer, tis sizeable herd of deer loaf in this area as there’s ready food and ideal woodland close by. These animals are used to humans and merely wary of me and my camera, losing interest when they realise I’ve no carrots. What a joy it must be to live here and see them daily. The children of a nearby house are so used to them, they take no notice….
March 10th – Again, the barriers around the southern dam works were breached at the basin and to the north end of the compound. I see the dredging has started, but the drying lagoon on Chasewater shore has been razed, so no quite sure what’s happening there. The question, however, as to what you do when your dredger is shafted has been answered. Still out of the water at Ogley Basin, the original machine is clearly still crippled, so it would appear a mini-excavator is lifted onto a workboat, and work continues. Odd that a brand new, seemingly little used dredger amusingly called ‘Hamster’ – has been languishing in Ogley Junction for at least two years. If this is a symbol of the way the newly reorganised British Waterways charity works, we’re in for interesting times…
March 10th – Spring is certainly climbing onto her throne. Zipping up through Chasewater yesterday, I saw the first frogspawn of the season in the creek between Jeffrey’s Swag and the (still depleted) main lake. The creek is healthy, and flows again. There were one of two frogs around, but unlike the more laconic common toads, they scarper on seeing humans. This is a good sign: better days are on the way. Hello, frogs, welcome back!
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