March 11th – A nasty graunching from the rear brake on the way home was severe enough to have me check it out as soon as I got home. Much to my shock, I found the stock, soft resin-organic brake pads in my rear calliper were just a bit worn.

Ahem.

The new sintered metal ones are at the rear, the ones I took out in front. That’s bad. Should have spotted it sooner – luckily I don’t seem to have damaged the disc.

Never take your eyes of those essential maintenance tasks, people!

March 11th – The Newtown One. Like the Scarlett Pimpernell, they seek her here, they seek her there. Always within snatching distance, but always evading the grasp.

This bird has a safe roost, free food and company back home. But she appears to prefer contemplating silently life’s complexities at the canal side.

The saga continues…

March 10th – For the first time in what I think must be two years, Chasewater is overflowing into the spillway again. That means it’s as full as it can now possibly get. From an environmental point of view, this is interesting, as during the wet winter the lake has filled from it’s tributaries, and held back their flow from the rivers Trent and Tame where they would otherwise end up – now the overspill will got into the Crane Brook, and flow several miles downstream to the Tame at Tamworth.

At the moment, the flow is fairly slight, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few days.

It’s something to note that the water is overtopping the weir fairly evenly, which is quite a testament to the engineers who constructed it: the horizontal looks just about spot on!

March 10th – It had been a really grey, overcast, dull day – but briefly and tentatively, as I neared Brownhills the sun came out. Just for a short while. So I headed to Chasewater to catch it, and to check out the water level, which I’d heard was now overflowing as a result of the previous day’s rain.

What I found was life-asserting and beautiful; a mackerel sky over a soft, still reservoir, where the guys from the Wakeboard facility were setting up again for a new season. The swans, rather than being alarmed, seemed to be investigating the activity with interest.

The whole scene was suffused by a soft, slightly misty light. Utterly wonderful.

March 9th – Coming back to Brownhills on the wettest and greyest of evenings, I stopped to take a call at the top of Clayhanger Lane on Lindon Road. The traffic was terrible, it was cold and the rain was penetrating.

It seems a world away from the warmth of a few weeks ago.

Hopefully, spring won’t be far away – and we can at least, hope for warmer rain…

Have to say, if the road surface gets any worse on Lindon Road they’ll have to give up sweeping it and plough it instead.

March 9th – The spring imperative seems to be afoot again – reports of frogspawn locally, and the Canada geese seem to be pairing up again, all the better to mug passing cyclists for treats.

I’m sure we see the same two on the the canal between Catshill Junction and the Black Cock Bridge every year. They are used to being obstructive and noisy until paid off with a tidbit.

I do love these rowdy, uncouth characters. It’s good to have them back!

March 8th – There’s clearly a traffic survey going on along the feeder routes on Walsall Ring Road. A huge amount of monitoring equipment has been temporarily installed at junctions and crossings, some of it quite high tech.

In a journey between Lichfield Road and Ida Road I must have seen 20 different items of equipment – cameras, motion sensors etc.

This must be costing a lot of money. Wonder what’s going on?

March 7th – I don’t often ride through The Butts in Walsall, although it’s a lovely place. The tightly packed streets of traditional terraces are lined with parked cars, and any ride through this fascinating place is marred by conflict with other traffic, which is a great shame as I miss scenes like this.

Stopping to wait for my companion caught up further back, I looked up Borneo Street to see a perspective sunset, perfectly replete with TV aerials, chimneys and the ghostly white LED street lights.

I could really love this place, were it not such a challenge to cycle around.

March 7th – Meeting a friend of the train at Walsall to ride home together, the sunset was vivid and beautiful. This isn’t the most handsome of stations, trapped in the red-brick late 70s gap been brutalism and the utilitarianism of the 80s, it’s functional and a decent place to get a train or wait. 

I don’t know why, but I love this place at twilight.