May 22nd – A long time since I featured Jockey Meadows here – the Site of Special Scientific Interest lying on wetland between Walsall Wood and Shelfield.

Usually the last bit of local landscape to green up, it’s looking splendidly fresh and verdant in the sun, possibly because the annual occupancy by a heard of meadow-maintaining cows haven’t appeared yet.

I notice someone’s come in here with a tractor recently though, which is interesting.

A beautiful and very important place!

May 23rd – Spotted in Walsall late this afternoon, parked up outside the Saddlers Health Centre – this Dutch box bike, clearly used for transporting a child.

This one is made by Workcycles of Amsterdam, and features roller hub brakes, a nexus hub gear and small wheels. 

I’d imagine it weighs a tonne and rides like a tank. Majestic and stately come to mind – but what a wonderful thing.

My compliments to the pilot!

May 21st – Also out in abundance was the sallow, which is shedding heavily and coating canals, tracks and lanes in clumps of soft fluff.

This isn’t such good news for me, as the damned stuff makes me sneeze, but it is rather fascinating.

If you see you local waterway coated in scum in the next few days, don’t assume the pollution is man-made, it may well be your local trees, doing their fluffy thing…

May 21st – A much nicer day with warm sun and gentle southerly breeze. I headed out through Stonnall to Footherley, then Canwell, Hints, Tamworth and on the canal to Polesworth, returning via Orton on the Hill, Austrey, Clifton and Harlaston. A nice 60 miler.

We’re into summer now; the leaves are fully out, the air is alive with bugs, bees and birds, and pollen is the dominant scent. The countryside of Staffordshire and Leicestershire was beautiful, and I was pleased to note the honeybees still nest in the roof of Hints Church, as they have done for decades.

All topped off with a lovely sunset over Ogley Hay that showed St James Church beautifully.

Changeless, and beautiful.

May 20th – I popped out for a short run on shopping errands to Brownhills, in a gap in the rain. I caught up with the watered swan family on the ramp between the Canoe Centre and the basin on the corner – the youngsters, still numbering six, were lounging and taking naps under the watchful eye of mum and dad.

The adults weren’t at all aggressive with me, so they must be getting used to the human attention, but I was glad of the zoom to keep me out of pecking range.

It’s clearly very tiring work, being cute.

May 19th – Much of the journey was an errand in Digbeth. I visited the Custard Factory, the hipster area that once promised so much, but these days seems to be a sort of holding area for a failed urban arts dream; but beyond it I found the River Rea, skulking through Digbeth like a dirty secret. 

Also in the backstreets, the bizarre, never finished abandoned Duddeston Railway Viaduct, partially built by the Great Western Railway to gain access to Birmingham New Street, but abandoned half-built when they built their own station at Snow Hill instead, now standing as a sort of infrastructure curiosity, barely noticed by most people who visit.

Returning through Aston and Gravelly Hill, I passed from Salford Park to Aston itself, along the cycleway by the Tame, snaking under the motorway and Cross City Line viaducts. The 1960s motorway revolution heard you liked viaducts, so they put another viaduct over the one you already had.

Birmingham is about it’s arteries: river, canal, rail and road. They both bisect the city, and give it character and history, and I love them all.

May 19th – A gentle afternoon amble into Birmingham along the canal was a lovely trip – but I did get drowned on the way home. I went from work, along the Tame Valley canal and down the Walsall Canal to Aston. It’s nice to see the route to Birmingham now smoothly surfaced all the way from Rushall Junction at Ray Hall, a real improvement that will see me coming this way more in future.

On my way I saw cats, geese, and my nose noted that the flag irises were out, which although gorgeous – in this case growing around an unexpectedly beautiful pond in the shadow of a huge recycling plant in Saltley – always set off my hay fever.

A lovely canal ride on a grey, showery day that still showed the best of urban Birmingham.

May 18th – Another beautiful blossom that’s rarely looked at closely despite it’s obvious beauty is hawthorn, or May blossom.

I often incorrectly think go it as being the last blossom of the season, but it isn’t; but it’s so profuse in hedgerows and scrubs that when the flowers die off, everywhere seems quite barren without it.

Not so missed is the scent, which is strong and peculiar in that way that some flowers are, a strong organic odour that one could easily find offensive.

It’s hard to think that we’re only a few weeks now off the middle of the year, and the seasons are rapidly advancing with spring rolling into summer.

Just where has this year gone?

May18th – Arriving at work today on a sunny, bright but nippy morning in total contrast to the day before – I spotted this wee creature, very much alive on the doorhandles. I guess it can only have got there by a startled bird dropping it when disturbed by a called (I had just missed the post who’s not noted for their gentle approach to their duty).

I was quite concerned it might die, so I popped it in a nearby tree – presumably to be taken again by bluetits or some other creepy crawly eating bird.

Wonder what it would grow into?