Tag: 365daysofbiking

#365daysofbiking An awkward subject

January 26th – Like the village itself, Walsall Wood Church of St John is a quiet, understated gem. Originally a tiny church, extended massively by the Victorians, then again pretty brutally by the diocese of Lichfield in the 1980s, its personality has maintained surprisingly well.

It’s a lovely subject at night, has a great clock and presents a great aspect to the road. But for a couple of things.

The bloody streetlight just out of shot on the right, and the pedestrian crossing light in the foreground.

Any decent angle on the building includes one, the other or both, destroying the shot. It’s one of those frustrations that just make the character of a place.

But that’s Walsall Wood for you. Never less than quirky.

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#365daysofbiking Wood and heart


January 26th – And there it were – gone. With neither a thank you nor a goodnight, the mist upped and left, and Sunday was damp, wet but mercifully clear with an appreciable wind.

The air was clearer. I could breath again without feeling that grip on my chest from traffic fumes.

I came back from helping a pal in the early evening, and stopped for the cashpoint in the High Street. It was quiet. The takeaways were doing trade, the pubs seemed alive, but traffic was light and this still identifiable ex-mining village straddling the Walsall to Lichfield Road slumbered peacefully.

I like Walsall Wood. I always have. It’s not prepossessing, exotic or flash. But it has soul and warmth and always looks welcoming at night.

It’ll always have a bit of my heart.

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#365daysofbiking Living in another world

January 25th – Of course, I came back through Chasewater for a reason. I wanted to get Chasewater and the area surrounding in mist, when I actually had time to experiment.

As it happened the experiments pretty much all failed, but some notable successes – mainly by accident – were evident. The glass-hard Nine-Foot pool; Chasewater pier looking like something from a film set. The curing wall of LED streetlights over the distant sweep of the deserted M6 Toll. The eerie otherworldliness of the Black Path with its sodium and skeletal trees.

It did indeed seem like another world, but in that one my photographic talents sadly remained as erratic and hit and miss as in this one.

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#365daysofbiking Bending the light

January 25th – The mist still hadn’t lifted, and in fact it seemed to be becoming more dense.

I’d been over to Burntwood for an errand, and came back via Chasewater after dark, getting some shopping in on the way. As I rattled down the bumpy north shore path where it runs between the Rugby Club and Chasetown Bypass, concerned for the fragility of my purchases, I noticed the curving ‘wall of light’ effect of the streetlights on the fog, bending away from me like I was repelling it.

It was one of those moments when an unexpected, mundane scene caught a unique light and became precious.

Like Clayhanger did  a few days before. Low cloud does have its benefits, I guess.

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#365daysofbiking Persistence of the night

January 24th – But of course, the crippling thing about this time of year is that there’s great optimism in the morning light, when one can actually see the dying of winter.

But when the dark repossess the day on the way home, it feels like deepest winter again: Which being in January as we are, it actually is.

The persistence of the night – like here in Green Lane, Walsall Wood – is sobering, depressing, but essential. The dark may be retreating. But we’re a ways away from the death yet. We must keep pushing, keep going.

Until the persistence is no more. For another season.

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#365daysofbiking Starting to show


January 24th – It’s happening, it really is happening.

In Kings Hill Park on a wet, grey morning, flowers are coming – from humble, enduring daisies to the first crocuses (yellow. Why are yellow always the first?) with the taller, bolder spring flowers now developing well too.

Spring is showing. It’s starting to come now, and whatever happens in the next month, soon it will be here, with it’s warmer, lighter days, flowers and green.

I am so ready for it.

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#365daysofbiking Diffuse

January 23rd – The murk continued through the next day, too, and it was beginning to get on my chest. Cycling in it, with it’s grim cocktail of traffic fumes, damp, road spray and smog is not inspiring.

However, I had to nip up to Coppice Side on the way home to see a pal. As I crossed the old Jolly Collier bridge, the urban lights and mist combined to make something special.

The diffuse glow of the gas discharge lamps suddenly made a very ordinary place extraordinary, and I was captivated.

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#365daysofbiking Mist but not missed


January 22nd – This is a very strange winter we’re having. I hope spring and summer prove more traditional. It’s not really been very cold, but it’s been horrendously wet. I’m so used to rain now that it barely surprises or bothers me, and I think I’m developing a love of it, like some weird meteorological Stockholm syndrome.

At the moment, the warm damp is masquerading as a heavy, cloying mist-drizzle that’s settled here for the best part of a week, really. It’s grimy and horrible to ride in, and is also keeping the fumes and smell down from the local landfills and industry, making the whole atmosphere feel dirty and polluted.

Leaving Bloxwich station I passed a couple of the town’s many backstreet boozers: The venerable Romping Cat, as classic a Black Country pub as one could find, and the more boisterous Spotted Cow, which despite a chequered history, hangs on as a popular local’s pub.

In the murky, nasty mist they looked beautifully warm and welcoming. I could have slipped in there and then for a pint.

But this wasn’t 1995, and that isn’t the current version of me. So I admired these watering holes from the street, remembered fondly long gone days with workmates and their many, many post-work pints, then rode home.

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#365daysofbiking Sometimes the darkness is your friend

January 21st – Returning home from Bloxwich through Clayhanger, I took the Spot Path back to Brownhills rather than the usually manic and stressful Pelsall Road, the main reason I don’t usually go that way. As I left the village and headed up over the common, I found myself totally alone in the dark.

It was murky and drizzly and there wasn’t a soul about. I could hear distant traffic, dogs, the sounds of people on the new estate over the back – but compared to the ride I’d just had, this was blessed solitude.

This is never a particularly beautiful spot by day. It’s OK, it’s nice enough. But it’s at night that it’s specialness comes to the fore.

Sometimes the lonely dark can actually be reassuringly companiable.

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#365daysofbiking You picked a fine time to leave me

January 20th – One of the few hard frosts of the season so far greeted me as I left on my bike for work.

I was very, very glad on the cycleways of Telford particularly for the studded winter tyres: Surefooted and grippy as ever. There was a lot of black ice, and I never once felt unstable.

Sadly what did cause me problems was my back brake losing all bite: For some reason my pads chose this morning to wear completely out to the point at which they were just about useless. The crossover point between ‘These are OK’ and ‘Where’s my stopping power gone?’ was one braking action on a downhill.

The one set of conditions when you really need to leave the front brake alone and only use the back… Oh dear.

Luckily, there were no spills.

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