Tag: 365daysofbiking

October 30th – So, they do clean them occasionally. Alighting at Tyseley on a sunny autumn morning, I happened to look up the track to the train wash. I’ve never seen it in use before. Seems to be doing a good job – this 153 ‘Dogbox’ positively gleams. Bet the inside still smells of mould, though…

October 30th – I spotted this yesterday, but it’s surprisingly hard to photograph. Growing from the thinnest of fissures in a capstone 20ft above Park Street in Birmingham, a small shrub. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s bearing the most beautiful red berries. It’s way out of reach beyond the platform fence of Moor Street Station, where the line crosses the street below. Here, the parapets and abutments of the bridge ramble and cross, and this small plant is clearly thriving, unseen, unchecked and unappreciated, presumably seeded by the local birdlife.

Give nature half a chance and it’s in like Flynn. Wonderful.

October 28th – 6:00pm, Walsall Bus Station. Oops. The bus was touching the railings, and I suspect the driver was touching cloth. Although no significant damage appeared to have occurred, the bus was halted here for some time.

Ironically, the advert on the side is promoting bus driving as a career. 

October 28th – The shift from BST to GMT and the earlier fall of darkness is always depressing, but it did allow me to catch a great sunset sky over Birmingham on my way home tonight. The inclement weather had left the door open for the cold, and it felt like winter out there, cold, dark and intemperate.

Better get used to it quickly, I guess…

October 28th – The dire storms predicted and anticipated never reached the Midlands, although they caused fatalities and damage down in London. This led to many trains being cancelled, and knock-on effects being felt across the rail network. Moor Street Station, usually brilliantly run by Chiltern Trains, slipped up. When I turned up to catch my train, the whole passenger information system – including the displays on the platforms – was showing a message of total cancellations, with no local services listed. I was just about to turn tail and head down to Tyseley by bike, when a Stourbridge train rolled in. It turned out, local trains were running fairly normally, and the delays were only on London bound services.

Why on earth you’d choose not to point that out on the main information screens I have no idea – I bet more local passengers pass this way in a week than London ones. 

I guess this is what happens when a London-centric company gets to run faraway stations: only the London view matters.

October 27th – I’m not one for religiously washing bikes, preferring the patina of grime that shows a bike is well used, and also makes it less attractive to thieves. However, the mud gathered on my bike over the past couple of days is loaded with pine needles and grit. These, over time, will get into moving parts and for a sticky, resinous paste that will accelerate wear and attack paint and metal. As soon as the weather clears it’ll be out with the Muc Off spray and a hosepipe. 

October 27th – The fungus, on the whole, is great this year, but the fly agaric remain elusive. My usual best spots for finding this most fairytale of toadstools – up on the canal behind the Terrace at Newtown, on the common opposite Birch Coppice and at Chasewater just by the bypass have all shown poor examples this season. These few decent ones were spotted on the canal bank at Anglesey Basin.

The puffballs – a fine crop – were all growing near Fly Pool on the North Heath at Chasewater. In a few weeks that green gunk inside will be dry, powdery spores, and the fungus will pop open on contact and scatter them on the wind.

The mystery large toadstool was on the canal embankment near Lichfield Road. I have no idea what it was, but it was very large and alive with bugs.