Tag: 365daysofbiking

September 28th – Other people’s bicycles. I’d been to the Cycle Show at the NEC. This involved a journey into Birmingham by bus – I hadn’t been on one for over 12 months, and hated it. Walking up Corporation Street from the University, I noticed this bike chained to the scaffolding. It’s a venerable old British Eagle, and someone loves it. Later, as I was leaving the show, I noticed this black fixie parked outside the entrance at the NEC. Sometimes the best bikes are the oldest, most loved ones.

September 27th – As I returned along the canal, something remarkable happened. A rainbow formed. In the distance over Hammerwich from the canal, the sky went from blue, to dark, to blue again, and then moved to form the most incredibly vivid rainbow. It lasted about ten minutes, long enough for me to wonder if there really was a pot of gold at Meerash Farm, but then, as quickly as it formed, it dissipated. It left one cyclist transfixed. Remarkably, all this occurred with no rain where I was. Sometimes, you’re just in the right place at the right time, and today, this was the case. I was privileged to see this. Nature, reminding us that it holds all the cards and will perform when she’s ready.

Perhaps autumn isn’t so bad after all.

September 27th – I’d been in Darlaston and escaped early. The skies were incredible late afternoon, and so I headed up to Chasewater, where I knew they’d be spectacular. I wasn’t wrong – they threatened a real storm, which never came. But in-between the rage-purple and black clouds, there were patches of azure blue. Photogenic weather, this is more like it.

September 26th – The poor weather continues. On my way to work, despite expecting a dry run, it rained; and also, on my return. I got the train to Lichfield, and did some shopping on my way back. The evening alternated between a searching, oddly penetrative drizzle and bright skies with a little hazy sunshine. Crossing Summerhill on the A461 Lichfield Road, I noticed the sunset was stunning. Lets have more of this, and less of the rain, please. Come on, weather, you’ve made your point…

September 26th – I’ve spent a lot of time in Tyseley lately, and I have an odd kind of love-hate relationship with the station. Tyseley, as Ive noted here before, is now a heavily industrialised area, and has a mixed air of quiet decay and frantic commerce. The station, with it’s GWR accoutrements and air of very faded splendour speaks of a time when this Birmingham suburb was more genteel and rail was king. Scruffy, rotting and largely unloved, the station sits like a drunken duchess, quiety getting drunk whilst dwelling on past glories in some last chance saloon. Willowherb and buddleia grow from gutters, walls and platforms; the roofs and canopies leak, and everything gives an air of decay. But somehow, I actually think I like the place.

25th September – It’s damned hard to find decent photos in the rain. Leaving Walsall, I noted that the surface water problem at the Arboretum junction is ongoing. For some reason, whatever they surfaced the new road with, it doesn’t drain well. There seems to be a permeant layer of water of the surface, and that can’t be safe. It’s notably confined to new sections of the road, and I’ve never quite seen this before. Most odd.

Approaching Brownhills, I passed the decaying husk of the Wheel Inn, the lost pub on the Lindon Road, Brownhills. I had hoped something would be done with the building after the fairground people bought the yard behind, but little has changed. Walsall Council have recently been making noises about forcing owners to sort out derelict eyesores: if, as I suspect, the building is owned by Pat Collins Fairs, then that particular enforcement notice would be interesting, to say the least…

September 25th – After a bright start, I’d braced myself for a very, very grim commute home, the forecast was awful. As it happened though, it was just drizzly wet, and the wind was behind me. I think I must be getting inured, but I haven’t noticed webs developing between my toes yet. Coming up the ramp at Walsall, I looked, as I often do, at the overhead supply catenary for the railway. The complexity of this system fascinates me, and today, I could hear it crackle and buzz in the wet. Years of design refinement have made this system generally very weatherproof, and that’s a remarkable thing. The 25,000 volts coursing over that metalwork doesn’t take prisoners and will arc long distances in the damp. Railway people are given to calling the overheads ‘knitting’, and you can see why. 

September 25th – The mystery of the bean field continues. The commute home was grey and made grim by late trains, but at least it was dry. Coming back along green Lane to Walsall Wood, I noted that the fields of beans here – unlike the ones in Lynn, near Stonnall, hadn’t been harvested. They’re just rotting in the fields. Whether that’s the plan, and it’s just a crop rotation technique, or whether the lousy summer ruined the crop, I have no idea, but I’m hoping someone can explain…

September 24th – The bad evening predicated a bad morning; it was one of the worst commutes weather-wise I’d had for years. Thanks to a tipoff early on twitter by Aiden MacHaffie, I knew before I left that trains on the Cross City were shafted, and my journey would therefore have to start at Walsall. Heading to Tyseley in heavy rain, the usually assortment of bad weather bad drivers made themselves painfully evident. The trains were rammed, and by the time I found myself waiting at Moor Street, I was wet, chilly and down in the dumps. I don’t know so much about autumn, someone seems to have left the door open and winter wandered in. Ugh.

23rd September – This is an awful photo, but it was an awful evening. It does, however, show that the flooding problem at Anchor Bridge, Brownhills, has been alleviated somewhat. In very heavy rain, a pool still forms on the southbound side, but of nothing like the severity it was, and I think most of that is more to do with the physics of the road than any drain blockage. It’s taken a long time, and an awful lot of folks to sort this out. Well done to everyone who’s had a go over the years – from councillors to locals.

Sorting stuff like this shouldn’t be that hard…