February 14th – A sunset spin around Brownhills on a bitingly cold, but thankfully dry afternoon. This is again the season of good fine sunsets, and cold days like these are usually rewarding. Chasewater was as beautiful as ever, but the beauty caught Newtown and the canal, too, and it was a pleasure to cycle in. Hopefully with the lengthening days and drier weather I can get up on the Chase soon. I’m so missing it, but since Christmas it’s been so muddy it’s been very difficult going from what I’ve heard.

Evenings like this make me optimistic that the current spell of bad weather will be settling down soon.

February 13th – I wasn’t very well, so I only cycled out on a quick errand to deliver something in Walsall Wood. On the way back, I decided to hop onto the canal at Hollanders Bridge. There was little wind for a change and the canal was pretty flat. Even though it wasn’t late, everywhere seemed eerily quiet.

Walsall Wood, despite being part of the lumpen sprawl of North Walsall, is still lovely and retains a village atmosphere.

hannahbest13:

Disused railway line from Brownhills to Pelsall, now a sustrans cycle path. This is the old signal just by the One Stop depo and Stevie Ansells riding school. I often stop here while walking the dog. The view catches my breath frequently, but I can’t always capture it as I would want to. This one pleases me. Can’t remember the exact date. Probably Summer 2015.

February 12th – Still just light for 75% of my commute home, the bright western skies were a cheering feature of commutes this week. The ring road traffic was driving me nuts, so I took a shortcut past the Walsall College site and over the new bridge at North Street, which is still closed to general traffic. 

The Walsall College building I’ve always found to be a hideous, cheap-looking tin shed, but it does look rather wonderful from behind at night, and the classic view over to the church never ages,

I’m so looking forward to leaving the darkness behind this year.

February 12th – A mad, mad, bonkers season. Discernible by the blossom before the leaf, this is blackthorn (that’s sloe) in bloom on a motorway embankment in the Black Country. 

Out on an errand in the morning, I spotted loads of it in healthy, bright bloom. As a hermaphrodite flower I’m not sure if this early blossom will be good or bad for the crop come autumn.

Along with the daffodils now widely in bloom, this early spring is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

February 11th – Heading over Catshill Junction to slide down the High Street, I still can’t get over the lights and reflections of the new build, and the way it affects what was a formerly barren spot at night.

Combined with he LED streetlights from Chandlers Keep, it feels quite awake there these days, no longer lonely and isolated at all.

February 10th – I’m quite liking the weather this week since it’s calmed down a bit. Cooler, clearer, some great evening skies. Sunset now well after 5pm, which means I’ll soon be commuting home in the light again.

In the meantime, stood silent sentry, but buzzing with unseen data, the cellphone station in Darlaston was a beautiful contrast to the black country dusk.

It seemed to be trading secrets with that beautiful crescent moon – which, as my grandfather might have said ‘is lying on it’s back and holding rain in its belly’ – so perhaps it’s not a good sign…

February 10th – Still irritating me is the work to resurface a perfectly decent canal towpath between Walsall Town Centre and Bentley Bridge. Kier, the contractors, are pushing ahead – mainly because they seem to have realised they haven’t much to actually do. 

I don’t know who was consulted before the Canal & River Trust decided to undertake this project – it certainly doesn’t appear to have been local cyclists. 

Such a waste of money when towpaths in Aldridge and Bloxwich are virtually impassible to all in the winter.

February 10th – A nice day, and on a mission to check out something at the Waterfront in Walsall.Amongst all the new stuff here as part of the cinema development – a few restaurants and bars – there is promised to be a Hungry Horse, a more traditional style pub. In an online discussion, we couldn’t work out where it was likely to be, so I swung past this morning. 

It looks likely to be in the units closest the canal, I think: everyone loves a pub with a canal view. 

Bit concerned about the unfenced paving to the canal edge, though: I can visualise something rolling off that before long.