February 25th – A dull, grey, chilly day. Again, I came back via Shenstone to avoid a punishing northeasterly wind, but also hoping to find some inspiration in the nascent spring. Sadly, there was none in the dull, grey, darkening lanes, but the spirit of the Footherley Brook remains.

April, come she will, but she’s a long time arriving.

February 24th – I passed the boat yard at Ogley Junction as dusk was falling. I note with some disdain that the dredgers and associated butties and tugs are still languishing here,12months to the day after the blue machine toppled over in Anglesey Basin, it remains abandoned with the other equipment – including a decent tug – brought in to do the job. Behind them, the white and yellow frame of a brand new, unused dredger called ‘Hamster’, left here at least four years ago by British Waterways and never used. Such machinery is extortionately expensive. Just who can afford to purchase it and then let it rust away, unused, to nothing?

Madness. And they wonder why the Canal & River Trust is struggling.

February 24 – Flowers have again appeared on the miner railings in Brownhills, and I have no idea why. There is no note. They are attached firmly with cable ties, and there are three separate bunches, bundled together. I can’t think of any fatalities here. The wreaths tied here at Christmas were soon cut down and taken away, which I though was rather sad.

Does anyone have any idea what this is all about?

February 23rd – Evidence of subterranean systems of an altogether more sinister nature can be found dotted around the borderlands of Walsall Wood, Shelfield and Aldridge. These odd enclosures – one in the fall towards the marl pit by the Brickyard Road canal bridge at Stubbers Green, and the other, on scrub near the end of Dumblederry Lane in Aldridge, are grim reminders of what lies beneath. They are access boreholes to the mine workings beneath, filled with millions and millions of gallons of toxic waste, dumped there after the mines closed. The dumping, over the course of a couple of decades, was freeform and barely regulated. The current operators of the site from which this dump is accessed manage it carefully. The boreholes, of which there are a number, are fenced and secured for obvious reasons. The one at Dumblederry lane has a breather valve fitted, to vent gas safely into the atmosphere.

February 23rd – There’s been a lot of work going on in the fields of Home Farm, at Sandhills, as seen from the canal at Catshill. Trenches have been dug along the fields a few metres apart, and pipes buried there. It’s either an irrigation or drainage system going in – it’ll be interesting to see what’s planted here. The machinery doing the job is fascinating.

February 23rd – Also at Chasewater, there’s some pollution happening.

This is good pollution, however. A casual observer might stand on the waterline of the now-full lake and wonder what the froth and scum is, gently lapping the shore. It’s the side effects of Chasewater once again being host to massive numbers of Gulls, who come here to roost on the water at twilight. 

Yes, tens of thousands of birds frequent this reservoir in the evening, where they rest, loaf and bob gently in the wind. Whilst they do this, they preen. The scum is actually bird feathers, plucked during preening.

Biodegradable, they will rot away, or be gathered by other birds for nesting material. Recycled, naturally.

February 23rd – The cows on Chasewater’s north heath are a fixture now. Kept there to maintain the heathland, they do so by nibbling the fast growing voracious species, and allow the hardier, slower growers to come through, and their poo helps nourish the land. Earlier in the year there was just four, but there’s nine now, and they don’t seem to mind the people. 

They don’t take any nonsense, either; they’ll stand their ground against impudent dogs and anything else that distracts them from their preferred occupations – namely loafing, eating and snoozing.

February 22nd – One of those days when you get back home thinking you’ve got a camera choc-full of great stuff, then realise you had the camera set badly and all your hard work appears to be fuzz and junk. Luckily, down in Sonnall sorting fish and chips from the best chippy in the area, the camera hadn’t yet been nobbled by my ineptitude.

Stonnall is an odd place – in a way, it’s lost is old villageyness, and is now little more than a commuter resort. Drowning in Metroland-style postwar housing, the history can be hard to find. But at night, a little of the old-world charm returns.

Stonnall is a salutary warning for aspiring village communities everywhere: don’t develop at the expense of the things that make you special…

February 21st – It’s been cold, and the wind has been evil. Not particularly strong, but it’s from the east and is lazy; it doesn’t so much blow around you as straight through. Tired tonight after a hard day at work, I really couldn’t face the prospect of a headwind all the way home. So I got the train to Shenstone, and cycled back home from there.

I stopped for a picture just at the bottom of Shire Oak Hill. I haven’t cycled this route much this winter. The wind was behind me, but it was still cold. This hill doesn’t get any less steep either, but the lights are gorgeous in the dusk.

Tonight, this hill gave me a very hard time. Shire Oak Hill is an old adversary, and like all old adversaries, life wouldn’t be the same without it.