Tag: 365daysofbiking

September 15th – I headed out late morning hoping to get back before the weather closed in. I misjudged, and as I was pottering over The Swag the rain started. The marsh was great, and deserted, but almost everything was horrid shades of headache grey, the only colour being a curious orange flower growing in the brook. I headed back to Clayhanger and round the new pool, which still looks remarkably verdant for the time of year.

It felt wintry, and I felt down. There’s months of this to come and I don’t feel ready for it at all.

September 15th – My nosiness will one day be my undoing. For months now I’ve been curious about a drain cover I noticed at the top of the rough steps up to the old railway walk, just on the canal by Pelsall Road, Brownhills. It’s puzzled me because, well, there are no services up there, and no drains – certainly no electrics or telephony. But the access cover is new, and probably put there by whoever constructed the steps (and I never did find out who was responsible for those). Today, my curiosity bettered me and I flipped the plastic lid open – there’s a empty, corrugated tube veering to the side. A pebble dropped goes a fair way.

I popped the lid back, and went on my way, none the wiser…

September 14th – It usually takes a while for me to become comfortable with the presence of autumn, and this year it seems worse than ever. One of my favourite things that cheers me about this cruel season is collecting seeds of the deciduous trees – acorns, sycamore helicopters, conkers, rowan berries, beech mast and so on – by the pocketful, which I then randomly scatter on the margins I find; the commons, heaths, verges as I cycle past. This kind of guerrilla seeding is something I believe in, and lots of my friends have joined in with the practice. I’m sure I’m responsible for lots of the oak saplings on Clayhanger and Brownhills Commons.

This year, there is a huge, healthy crop of fat acorns. Grab some and spread the love.

I like to help the trees, because well, the trees need support.

September 14th – The big sky. I went out mid afternoon, in a fruitless search for a sandwich. All the Chasewater cafes have stopped serving butties after 2pm, which was sad, but I enjoyed a blast around a windy Chasewater none the less. All the time, I felt under ever-present threat from a sky that was clearly enjoying the drama. Thankfully, the rain held off. The wind, however, was something atrocious. Autumn is here to stay now…

September 13th – A grim commute in both directions. The wind and rain had arrived and seemed set to be in for the weekend. I’d suffered a thoroughly enervating week, and had had quite enough. Train delays and overcrowding made for a tough journey home, and I was glad to be coming back along the quiet lanes between Shenstone and Stonnall with a following wind.

The green, the fresh air and smell of the rain cheered me, but it was oh so hard. It’s a long time since I was this glad of a weekend.

September 12th – The weather has taken an autumnal turn of late, although this morning it felt unseasonably warm. I took loads of pictures this morning of fungi, then discovered afterwards I’d had the camera set badly and they were all fuzzy and out of focus. On the way home, though, I noted the last flowers of the season still holding up well, and the surprise lupins at Clayhanger were a shock. The dog roses near Pier Street bridge have both wonderfully scented pink flowers and beautifully orange hips. There are still traces of summer in the wet hedgerows and scrubs.

This is an odd season, to be sure.

September 11th – It was raining as I cycled home from Walsall, but for once, I didn’t mind. The wind was behind me, the air felt warm and the bike was moving easily. The events of the day were taking their toll and to my shame, I dismounted and pushed up the Black Cock Bridge. On the adjacent pedestrian bridge I liked the combination of rain, sodium light and metalwork.

The day was long, mentally I’d had a close call, but a weight was off my mind, and the promise of another day lightened my heart.

There’s tomorrow. There will always be a tomorrow.

September 11th – A very peculiar day. I had something important to do in the morning, and was expecting to be out of action for the rest of the day. As it happened, the morning didn’t take quite the toll I expected it to and I went to work. Staying late, I came back home as darkness fell. I can’t really put my finger on it, but I’m really taking a serious dislike to the ‘new’ New Street Station. The platform access is now at the one end, and the space down there is restricted and made claustrophobic by the ever-changing hoardings. Passenger information screens are not positioned in useful points anymore, and the cramped lifts, already scuffed and grubby decor in the upper concourse all stink of compromise and bodge.

This is not a transport hub undergoing a Lepidoptera style emergence from the cocoon of renovation, but a desperate attempt to polish a turd that should have been flushed years ago. 

September 10th – This just in from the ‘You’re having a bloody laugh’ department. A I noted last week, security at the bike parking facilities in the ‘new’ New Street Station is notoriously bad. Daily, the tally of thefts and vandalism increases. Notwork Fail, in their wisdom, stonewall any criticism or constructive comment.

Today, I noted they’ve been pro-active. They have pasted up a life-size photo of a copper on the hoarding behind the racks. 

This has to be a joke. Fellow cyclists, Network Rail are taking the piss.

(Sorry about the poor quality close-up, taking photos at New Street is frowned upon)