Tag: 365daysofbiking

September 26th – Winging back along the canal to Brownhills, I took another scout along the fringes of Clayhanger Common. Locals will know that 40 years ago, the was a benighted site of contaminated land used as a refuse tip. Careful and brave reclamation in the early 1980s saw the lad reclaimed and planted, and this is the result. Even with autumn on their heels, still the thistle, bindweed and meadow cranesbill are flowering strongly, teasels stand tall and ripe, and the shiny black gloss of elderberries hang heavy on the boughs. This is such a long way from how this land was, and something everyone in Brownhills should cherish and be proud of.

September 25th – Autumn is here now. I hate the interregnum between summer and autumn, neither one thing nor the other. I like Autumn – or at least, come to like it – when the leaves turn and the colours turn from green to gold. Despite the oddly warm weather right now, it’s starting to happen. A creeper in the hedgerow near the Black Cock Bridge has gone a deep, dark red, and along the canal to Brownhills, yellow and brown are starting to insinuate themselves into the trees and thickets. It’ll soon be time to get up into Abraham’s Valley on Cannock Chase, and capture the glory of the pines turning for another year.

September 25th – If you’re connected with ‘A Licence 2 Drive’ driving school, you may want to have a word with the people driving your vehicles.

One of your cars this morning was driven in such a poor way that I feared for my life, and then a passenger in the vehicle went on to shout and gesture abuse. Is this really the road behaviour competent driving instructors should espouse?

The above video stills are from a video filmed whilst I rode down the Chester Road, Stonnall, this morning. It was raining, and visibility was poor. I had full lights on and high-viz. As I approached the pinch point at the junction with Main Street, Stonnall and the Chester Road, one of your cars – a black BMW mini, BV61AUR – aggressively and unnecessarily cut through the narrow gap dangerously close to me. This was terrifying.

Having done this, a passenger in the vehicle shouted unintelligible abuse and gestured from the vehicle window, then pointed to the footpath.

This behaviour is shocking enough from any vehicle, more so from a car branded with driving school advertising. 

As a cyclist, in compliance with the Highway Code, I have a right to space and respect. I don’t expect either to be compromised by those charged with educating new drivers.

Septemebr 24th – I came home after a late finish at work full of cold. Still struck low with the weekend’s bug, the going was hard. The dusk fell during the commute, and I became painfully aware that we’re now in the few weeks where drivers seem to be re-learning to drive in the dark. I don’t understand the psychology at all, but up until about the end of November, driving standards at dusk will be very poor. Left hooks, getting pulled out on, overtaking into oncoming traffic. All tonight. I had bright lights and a generally decent road position. There must be a reason for this, I see it every autumn.

Be careful out there, folks. You never know what’s lurking at a bad junction or beyond the oncoming headlights.

September 24th – my love affair with Darlaston is decades old and shows no signs of abating. I adore the place, from the grimy industrial backstreets, to the quiet loveliness of Victoria Park. Here, half a century ago, trains thundered through this cutting serving the freight needs of the Black Country, but now, landscaped into a lovely open space, it makes for a nice traffic free ride away from some of the worst traffic of the town centre. In spring, this spot is lined with snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils. 

I always liked that footbridge, too; it’s an inspired touch.

September 23rd – The Birchils lock flight in Walsall is currently closed and mostly drained for maintenance. It’s interesting to see the pounds drained, and how much junk accumulates in them. Also the simple technology of damming the water to allow work to take place. Some flow still accrues due to overspill, and I was impressed with how clear and clean that was, and I noted how it had cut down to the clay liner – the ‘puddling’ – that keeps the canal water from soaking into the earth.

I don’t know how long the work will go on for, but it’s nice to see the locks being maintained.

September 23rd – The fungi is really starting to show now. No fly agaric yet, which is my favourite of all, but I did spot this beautiful golden bracket in Victoria Park, Darlaston today. Growing on an old tree stump, it was bleeding some kind of resin and very very vivid. It appears to be some variety of polypore, but I have no idea what, and the internet and my books haven’t been helpful. The other ones are common puffballs, growing on the canal bank at Pleck. When ripe, they’ll burst and release powdery spores that drift on the wind. 

In all the flora and fauna, the mycology is the most alien and beautiful to me.

September 22nd – I cycled down the spot path in near darkness, and total solitude. As the path opened out near the bend, I realised how eerie this was, and decided to take a picture. I then found I wasn’t alone at all. Just as this long exposure ended, a large male fox wandered out of the scrub on the left, turned to look at me for the briefest of moments, then walked off over the meadow to the canal.

Clearly, even in the quiet dusk of a Clayhanger Common Sunday night, there is important fox business to be done, if only the humans would mind their own bloody business…

September 22nd – It’s not been a great weekend, really. I seem to have contracted a cold, which left me feeling hungover on Saturday and just plain horrid today. It was with a sinus-generated migraine that I finally got it together and headed out at dusk. I found the dark soothing, and it made the visual disturbance less apparent. It was very still, and the sunset was gorgeous. Any other weekend I’d have been over the hills and far away, but today, my energy was sapped just doing a small loop on the canal around Clayhanger.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

September 21st – I’ve seen this before in other villages, but I’d not noticed it in Wall. I went back today to record the phone box library – a free book crossing project in a disused K6 telephone box. It’s a great idea. Not sure if they have any longevity, but a lovely thing to do.

Some of the books were pretty good, too.