May15th – I finished up early, had something to eat and then returned to Birmingham on the Snow Hill line. I used to trave that service a lot, but for five years now I’ve barely troubled it. Many of the landmarks from the line I knew have gone, or changed. 

When I got to Brum, it was too nice to hop on another train, so I dropped onto the canal, and rode home through Bordesley, under Spaghetti Junction, over to Pipe Hayes and along the Plant’s Brook Cycleway to Sutton. From there, I rode through the park home. A great ride – Brum canals are at their best in sunshine, and even the heron was out sunning itself. The dogroses at Tyburn were beautifully scented, and the canal limpid and lazy. 

Plant’s Brook cycleway is lovely, and I shall use it more often. Even the rabbits in Sutton Park performed for the camera. 

A wonderful afternoon.

May 15th – Today, I found myself in Droitwich, which is a place I used to go a lot, but rarely visit these days. A bright, sunny and warm day, it was a pleasure to be there.

There’s just one bit of Droitwich that really, really irritates me: just off the island at the top of Salwarpe Road, there’s a modern newbuild housing development. Some muppet in the design office decided they were going to make the new block of apartments look old, by building in false bricked up windows and bolting on very, very artificial architectural ironwork aping S brackets and circular tie plates. The effect fools nobody, and is visually and conceptually abhorrent.

Whoever designed and executed this dogs dinner really needs a crash course in good taste. It ruins an otherwise reasonable building.

May 14th – Grove Hill, near Stonnall, remains a muse to local photographers and historians alike. The hill topped with a lone tree is well known as a landmark to people passing on the Chester Road.

Myth and legend has it that a noble man is buried here, hence the tree, although the reason for its placement is probably more esoteric. Like the groinal hedge to its side, the tree is probably preventing soil erosion.

This year, the hill appears to have a crop of fine-looking wheat growing lush and green all around.

It’s a lovely spot.

May14th – I was back in Telford, and shut in an airless building with no natural light, so I missed a sunny, gorgeous day. This made it nicer to be out when I left though, and cycling home from Four Oaks in the evening sun I was struck by how green and verdant everything now is.

At Mill Green, the cottage looks lovely cloaked in it’s summertime shroud of greenery, and I noted the elders were flowering beautifully up the lane. 

A wonderful evening ride.

May 13th – The purple lupins (always earlier than the pink ones) are coming out on the canal bank above the big house at Clayhanger. I’ve never been sure if these are truly wild, or long-time feral escapees from the long gone garden of Ernest Jones, who had tennis courts and delicate flowerbeds at the foot of the embankment here nearly a century before. 

They are beautiful, complex and fascinating, and yet anotherindicator of the seasons escapement clicking over another notch. Spring goes from whites and yellows to blues and then purples. Summer is pretty much upon us now.

May 13th – Greetings from the West Midlands conurbation. 

This is post industrial land, between Shelfield and Walsall Wood; scarred by mining, marl extraction and years of poor drainage. Now partially a site of Special Scientific Interest, the land here is a beautiful green lung.

The Oilseed Rape on the corner by Grange Farm is nearly over now, but the may is out, and with cowparsley bobbing in the wind, one might be somewhere more rural. 

Cows have been let loose on Jockey Meadows again – I assume it’s part of the rotational heathland management here. They seem in their element in this boggy watermeadow. 

Wen did this space – in my youth a hinterland of desertion and scrubby, polluted bog – get so beautiful?

May 12th – Whilst taking my call and being glared at by the local wildlife, something else caught my eye at the canoe club on Silver Street. Tethered out of harm’s way is a mobile work raft. I can’t be certain, but Brian Stringer mentioned that the exterior of the Pier Street Bridge was to be cleaned for the canal festival, and I think that’s probably what the platform raft is for. 

They’re a common sight where bridge maintenance work is going on.

May 12th – That cheeky squirrel. I was cruising around the canal looking for the swan family – still nowhere to be found – on my way home from work. I stopped at the hazel thicket on the bend by the Watermead Eastate to answer a call. All the time I felt I was being watched. 

It seems Nutkin wants me to move along now, and not make a fuss….

Yet another example of why I’ll never make a wildlife photographer…

May 11th – I came back to Brownhills through Chasewater. At Anglesey Basin, I noticed that someone has fitted a guard plank to stop narrowboats – often moored here – banging into the weir edge. It’s a rough old job; the wood isn’t treated, so won’t last long, and the grouting into the sides of the basin is very rough. I suppose it’ll do the job, though. Wonder if this has been prompted by a general concern or a specific incident?