Tag: 365daysofbiking

#365daysofbiking Across the water

Saturday November 6th 2020 – A trip to Lichfield on an errand was necessary and it looked like a decent sunset so I headed to the pools – Stowe and Minster – to catch the Cathedral and misty salmon-pink views of the city.

I wasn’t disappointed.

It’s such a local cliche – those spires over the water, the reflection, the windows. But it is gorgeous and it’s never really the same twice. I love it, I really do.

Sometimes, it may not be original but you just have to do it…

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/3lTbCDV
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Restoring a light in the darkness

Friday November 6th 2020 – The second lockdown is not so far as bad as I feared: With kids at school, people are going to work and there is life and people around.

I kept up my commitment to fresh air and exercise by riding to Lichfield on an important errand, coming back after darkness fell through the little village of Wall.

Wall phone box is an original Giles Gilbert Scott and had been under refurbishment for some time, but is now thankfully fully and beautifully restored and returned to it’s post-mobile era as a community library.

But the best thing about it? It still has a light. So many lost their illumination when transferred to community ownership, but this one has not. As a cyclist of a certain age, the night-time rural beacons that were isolated phone boxes were almost romantic and welcoming to me, and their disappearance makes me sad. To see one restored is a joy to the heart.

Well done, Wall. Well done.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/3pijnFs
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Reflecting on failure

Thursday November 5th 2020 – I went to Chasewater to try to catch bonfire night fireworks, without much success. I’ve never had much luck with long exposure firework images, I guess I don’t have the required attention span.

Chasewater itself though was as gorgeous as ever and the glassy nature of the water and the few sparkles I caught on the horizon were evocative.

Oh well, maybe next year…

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2IqZYS3
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Home guard

Wednesday November 4th 2020 –  Working from home I left at sunset expecting to find a great sunset, but was thwarted by cloud; the disappointment was lessened, though by the lovely pink fading light over Home Farm at Sandhills.

Working from is difficult for me. I don’t mind it on odd days, but I need my commute and fresh air, and I need to be in my place at work with my things around me; during the first lockdown working from home made me very low indeed. I’m determined no to go there again.

I will continue to enjoy sights like this and must have my air and light. This time around, with another lockdown coming, I will of course obey the rules but I cannot allow myself to get as low as last time.I will continue to ride as long as I can.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2UiQsD0
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Acceptance

Tuesday November 3rd 2020 – A better day with milder weather and better cycling. I crossed Kings Hill Park on an errand, and stopped to admire the autumn colour.

There comes a point in autumn where you have no choice but to roll over and accept the darkness and cold, and just get on with it – but the consolation is always the colour and what the season does to favourite places like this park.

Autumn isn’t too bad once you stop fighting it, and then it becomes stunningly beautiful.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/3kn0ihs
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Hiding in the dark

Monday November 2nd 2020 – A windy, wet day with little to commend it. I took this photo from Catshill Junction bridge in the pitch dark on a long exposure and it’s not great, but does show the movement in the skyline well.

It was a foul, wet night – it’s rare I leave the towpath to hit the High Street due to mud and slipperiness but I did tonight.

But one thing redeemed the shot: I never realised the swan family were there, hiding in the dark.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/3kmYJA6
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Foxed

 

Sunday November 1st 2020 – Coming back from an errand in Chasetown, in the early evening, a pair of glowing eyes caught my attention in the hedgerow near Catshill Junction. Undeterred by my light, a fox emerged onto the towpath.

This young male, sadly suffering what appears to be mange on his hind quarters, was relatively unperturbed by my presence and checked me out for a minute of two before trotting off.

Foxes are martyrs to mange, a skin infection triggered by mites that cause hair loss and open, irritating sores.

Thankfully, the National Fox Welfare Society gives away a free treatment in the UK that householders can put into food to treat the disease, and return Reynard to health. To find out more about that, click here.

Always nice to make a fox’s acquaintance, but sad to see this one suffering.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/3l0BzB0
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Taking the Derbyshire hundreds

Friday, October 30th 2020 – There was a weekend of bad weather forecast, so I took the opportunity to get a long ride in – and aimed for a century, to test my fitness.

I achieved 110 miles, and returned to places I’ve not been in some years. I was very pleased, and the ride was exhilarating and beautiful.

It rained a couple of times, and I got wet, but it didn’t matter. Up the A515 to Sudbury, over to Scropton and Hatton, up through Shirley and Hole in the Wall to Hognaston Winn and it’s alien-like navigation beacon via the daunting Madge Hill. Sunset came and followed me up the High Peak Trail from Middleton Top to Parsley Hay, whereupon I headed to Ashbourne on the Tissington Trail in the blackest of nights.

The night run back via Alkmonton, Foston, Tutbury, Barton Gate, Yoxall, Hanch and Chorley was gorgeous and challenging.

Autumn on the trails and lanes of Derbyshire is a bit treacherous, but a fun ride: But as ever, the bleak, beautiful countryside of Derbyshire and East Staffordshire was the star.

It’s great to be back in the game at last. I thought I’d never make it.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/327Er7F
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Suffocation

Thursday, October 29th 2020 – I had to visit a store at Walsall’s Crown Wharf shipping Centre – a peculiar, strip parade out of town centre that was curiously built in the town centre.

Crown Wharf is awful: Like all parade malls, it surrounds it’s own car park and seems isolated from the town outside, and has sucked the life and larger stores from Park Street a hundred yards away, which is the town’s Main Street.

It’s incredibly brightly lit at night, and the trees on the Wolverhampton Road frontage have lights in all year around, giving a night-time feel of the worst kind of Christmas shopping all year around.

Crown Wharf is one of those odd, turn of the millennium regeneration projects that didn’t regenerate anything much, and seems cursory and contemptuous of it’s host town and environment, almost as if the architects and designers had learned nothing from Merry Hill twenty years before: A mall surrounded by industrial decay that only served to further suffocate the small towns around it.

I did what I had to, and left. I hate this place.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2JpZgEI
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Last of the year

Wednesday, October 28th 2020 – Over in Darlaston, the parks – Victoria and Kings Hill – are gorgeous in their seasonal jackets. I notice there are still beautiful flowers in bloom in the planters at Kings Hill, and the fallen leaves make for lovely colours in these vital, hidden gems.

I will always shout up for the parks in Darlaston: They get very little attention and they are such a lovely part of the town.

A real spirit lifter on the way to work.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2HXfbK0
via IFTTT