Tag: 365daysofbiking

November 20th – It’s all about stations this week. Off to Telford for a meeting early, then back to Tyseley. A day of delays, missed connections and grim, grey weather. I get to see a fair few of the local rail stations around Birmingham and the Black Country, and they’re a varied bunch, from the Victorian to the modern, from the beautiful to the pug-ugly. This one is Smethwick Galton Bridge, built adjacent to the imposing, remarkable iron bridge canal crossing it’s named after. Straddling two canals, the station sits at the crossing point of the Snow Hill former GWR line and the Stour Valley Line between Wolverhampton and Birmingham. Everywhere you look from this complex, multilevel edifice there is history, be it Chance Glassworks decaying nobly down the line, or the historic, grim 60s architecture of Smethwick. 
A station so complex, I’m not sure how it was planned, in a place who’s history is far more convoluted. Not bad for a grey Tuesday waiting for a late train. 

November 19th – An unexpectedly grim commute home. Late trains, packed in like sardines, rain and a gusting wind. It’s not looking much better for tomorrow morning, either. Alighting at Blake Street for a change (and hopefully a tailwind) the station looked grim and harsh in the drizzle. It’s about time we all gave this winter lark up as a bad job…

November 18th – My second attempt to find badgers. On Cannock Chase, In the dark, I found them. They were wonderful, but the light was too bad to take pictures. I won’t say where they were for obvious reasons, and I watched them way too long. I was left to rush home, back through the forest in darkness. It was brilliant, but very cold. All I could hear was owls, the flow of water, and small animals scuttling through the undergrowth. The Chase at night is a wonderful, full-on sensory experience.

November 18th – Today I made time to take a quick photograph of the concrete play sculpture at Chasewater, featured in a post on my main blog. It was created in 1962 by artist Bryan Blumer as a climbing object for kids, and originally stood in the play park. As Anne Bradbury says, it now somewhat ironically stands on a traffic island with notices requesting kids don’t play on it. Sad.

November 17th – Winter, cycling in darkness. I really can’t stress this enough, but lights, folks, lights. Lights are about being seen – creating a moving point of highlight in a dark world. In an urban environment, that’s all you need: to this end cheap LED blinkies and such are perfectly adequate. In rural environments, and for moving at speed off road in the dark, good forward illumination is essential. The better the light, the sooner you see hazards, the faster you can potentially go. I use an LED light by Hope, of Barnoldswick in the UK; it’s their flagship R4 model, and is very bright indeed. This is a non-assisted photo and shows the light spread on a medium setting. I have a very bright rear light from the same company. I love Hope’s stuff. They keep me safe at night.

November 17th – A trying day, for various reasons, but a rather good sunset. I’d been busy all day and hit home as darkness fell, before shooting out again. A day when I really couldn’t catch my breath, when it was suddenly taken by the sunset over the canal at Catshill Junction. A harbinger of a cold night, it was beautiful, and I wished I’d see more of it. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow…

November 16th – A little further on stands the ghost of the Catshill Flour Mill. Now converted into pleasant flats, this imposing, foursquare building once milled the flour for the bread of the town, before being converted into a factory making metal components. Repurposed 20 years ago, the mill still stands imposingly over a largely limpid and quiet canal. Oh, the tales it could tell…

November 16th – A day working from home – for working, read pottering about. I had to go to the dentist mid day, and wasn’t looking forward to it. I spun out for a short ride before the dreaded appointment. It was still murky, and a gentle mist sat over the fields towards Home Farm at Sandhills. My favourite tree – my seasonal chronometer – is now leafless, heralding the end of Autumn and the barren darkness of winter. Still, it’s a beautiful thing, whatever the season. I pulled up my collar, and pressed on.