Tag: 365daysofbiking

March 4th – A beautiful day, but still windy. The golden light of spring shone its benevolent best over the canal at Walsall, and it felt good. What was really impressive was that I saw the Pleck kingfisher again – well, actually kingfishers, as one seemed to be seeing another off the territory near the Scarborough Road bridge. I couldn’t get the camera out in time to take a picture, but there was no mistaking the twin cobalt blue flashes. They both seemed to go for cover in the trees somewhere in the bottom picture.

Interestingly, I rode the canal through to Goscote on the way home in the light, too, and saw one there. It’s clearly a great year for these beautiful little birds. I hope I get a good picture of one soon.

March 3rd – I was quite lucky with this, too; also handheld. The moon was my companion tonight as I rode through Sheffield and Walsall Wood, I noticed how bright it was. I love how if you can photograph it, detail you can’t see with the naked eye becomes evident.

All those miles of nothing between me and the moon. And yet, man has been there, and landed on that glowing ball. 

Such a wonderful, enchanting thought.

March 3rd – Cold, windy. Horrid journeys to work, fast and fun journeys back. It seems we’re in for a blustery spring, but it was light nearly all the way home tonight – another week, and I might get home in the light.

Ah, blessed light.

I’ve been fiddling with the new camera – astoundingly to me, these shots were all handheld (I don’t have steady hands). This one seems more sensitive, if that’s the word, and seems to select a faster shutter in lower light than previous models. I’m liking it a lot.

It was a fair sunset tonight, but clear, and harsh. I was glad to get in.

March 2nd – Fiddling with a next camera. After a brief flirtation with a Canon at Christmas – I hated it – I’ve just acquired the new Panasonic TZ70, the upgrade to last year’s TZ60. I’ll be twiddling with it for a while to find out what’s improved – and low light handheld images have definitely improved.

People often think I must carry a large camera around; I don’t – I just go for a little compact in my pocket, that’s easy to pull out and take spontaneous images with. I’ve tried big stuff in the past and find the size to be a hinderance.

No doubt for a few weeks I’ll be swearing at moved, changed or lost features – but having tried alternatives, I’m still resolutely a Panasonic chap.

As an aside, the works are very intense at Bentley Mill Way under the aqueduct – I won’t look at the plans as I want to gradually see the outcome. But that’s a very big culvert in there, I must say.

March 1st – I noted with some curiosity that earlier that day, the worst potholes and uneven patches in Brownhills High Street had been fixed by the council. This is good news – some of those potholes were so old and large, they had their own ecosystems. But it does mean that a full resurface, which the street really does need – must be a long, long way off.

Bugger.

March 1st – On a distinctly un-springlike day, I headed into Pelsall in the morning, and came back along the canal via Nest Common. The canal here is as stark and beautiful as it every is; a shimmering sky-coloured ribbon stretching off on three directions. However, the journey back – along muddy, churned towpath until I reached the better surfaced part at Ryders Hayes – was awful. 

Walsall Council and the Canal & River Trust are said to be investing, like Birmingham, in canal routes that don’t need surfacing, while ignoring spots like this and the canal through Rushall. It doesn’t make sense to me.

February 28th – Meanwhile, back in Brownhills, Silver Court Gardens, the site of the tenement estate that was razed to the ground a decade ago is seeing the start of operations to construct new housing.

This is a large project, and will be good for the local economy, without doubt. But more than that, it’s great to see so much lost, wasted land come back into use.

This is great for Brownhills.

February 28th – Another grey, dull day, with a worsening wind. I had stuff to do in Walsall Wood and headed up the canal to get there. Between Cathshill Junction and Walsall Wood Bridge, work has been ongoing since summer on the eastern embankment. First, it was strengthened with sectional piling at the Black Cock Bridge, and the level raised; now soil has been added to some thickness along much of the stretch, presumably to provide better security agains overtopping and to counteract weather erosion. 

I note that on the bend that was piled, staves have been driven into the bank, and reed beds planted behind, presumably to create a natural buffer against erosion in a particularly vulnerable spot.

Wonder if they’ll get round to fixing the brickwork and voids on the pedestrian side of the canal anytime soon?

February 27th – I had to pop into Aldridge on my way home and had ridden up Coppice Lane; not far from the gas turbine and leechate plant, another sign of a dirty underground secret from the past. This square compound on wind and mud-blasted wasteland, just off the rear entrance to the Ibstock Brick plant, is a breather for the mines underneath the area that were used as a dumping receptacle for millions of gallons of industrial toxic waste a couple of decades ago.

Inside this well-locked square palisade fence, a bulkhead is fitted to a borehole that goes hundreds of feet underground and allows gasses to vent to the atmosphere from the sludge within. The breather itself is from a tall pipe, well above human head height, up where the wind can quickly disperse anything nasty.

It’s sobering, and a bit chilling; and indicator that beneath this area there is an unknown quantity still requiring monitoring and care. But the ground it is in is surrounded in clay and favourable, and as time passes, the content should settle.

There are several of these installations in the local area – finding them is an interesting, if slightly unnerving challenge.