Author: BrownhillsBob

I told the truth - but told it bent. Wandering around bemused and ranty since 2007.

April 13th – It felt like winter returned today. Although the signs of spring were still all around – green shoots, songbirds flitting in and out of the hedges – the sky was dark and threatening. Here at Fighting Cocks Farm, between Stonnall and Springhill, it started to spot with rain.

April 12th – I’ve been able to find out little of John Smith. He was clearly a big cheese, because he could afford a handsome, three-storey foursquare traditional redbrick Staffordshire farmhouse – Ivy House Farm, Lower Stonnall. I pass this name stone set into the barn an awful lot, and often wonder if the stonemason did that deliberately, or if he was just illiterate, and copying something written for him. It’s a charming little mystery.

April 11th – The Goscote Valley in North Walsall is often condemned as a polluted, post industrial wasteland. This is sad as although it suffers the issues of any urban green lung, the cycle trail that runs parallel to the Ford Brook – tributary to the River Tame – is a quiet and speedy way to travel. Today, my journey was punctuated by the sight of a kingfisher, a large male fox and a buzzard. Nature has a habit of surprising you.

April 9th – Another leisure run out around Staffordshire and south Derbyshire. Plenty of buzzards, kestrels, rabbits and songbirds. Sadly, unusually high levels of roadkill at the moment. Oilseed rape is coming on, and the air is beginning to smell of pollen and green. Blossom is well advanced with cherries, apple and the continuing blackthorn showing well.