Tag: 365daysofbiking

November 30th – The Spring Cottage, once a lively, if rather rough pub sat on a major junction in the middle of Shelfield, is undergoing conversion into a Co-op store. Nearly complete now, it looks like only the car park resurfacing needs to be completed. I’m pleased to say that although the building is of no historical merit, efforts have been made to preserve it’s features as a prominent landmark. The wood and plaster cladding has been carefully restored, and the shopfront installed sympathetically to the nature of the building.

It’s nice to see such a prominent, once-derelict landmark get a new lease of life – and the Co-op stores aren’t bad at all. I wish the owners well.

November 29th – Walsall is an odd place architecturally. I love The Crossing at St. Paul’s – the former church cum shopping centre, and the wee piazza outside it where the Christmas tree sits. I don’t mind the bus station – at night, you can see what the architect was getting at. It’s all beautifully lit up… but the paving, the mixture of slate and pale grey granite composite blocks, arranged into stripes, to me at least is horrid. Further into what’s now known as ‘The Civic Quarter’ – ‘We ay pretentious, we’m not’ – there are the most horrid street lighting columns I have ever seen. I think the street furniture and paving – which clash, eye-jarringly – were purchased and some kind of urban designers fire sale. Walsall, on a civic level, does this sort of thing with alarming regularity. Weird.

November 29th – hopefully, I’ve finished with the train commuting for a while and am now working in the Black Country for a few weeks… I miss these commutes. Today though, was hell. I was headed due southwest into a very strong, insistent headwind. It took 65 minutes to do a journey that usually takes only 45. I was fully loaded, and at full tilt downhill under Navvie’s Bridge on the A461 Lichfield Road I was topping a heady 8.5 mph. The weather was grim and overcast, but the rain didn’t arrive until mid afternoon. Setting out home after the rains, the sunset was incredible but very, very short. Here near Wednesbury, the light glistened off the wet roads and made everything precious.

November 28th – Christmas is bearing down upon us. Last week, I recorded the unlit Christmas tree, ready to be decorated in St John’s churchyard, Walsall Wood; a week later there are lights in the tree and wrapped round the lampposts down the high street. It’s not the fast return of Christmas that bothers me, it’s the increasingly short gaps between them that bothers me. Humbug.

November 28th – A day in Leicester again, so I shot down to Lichfield Trent Valley before dawn. Dawn itself came just before Nuneaton, where I change trains. From the platform, the railway and it’s peculiarly universal vanishing points made for in interesting view in the golden morning sunlight. Sometimes, the oddest things can be precious.

November 27th – The sunset was also good at the old railway bridge over the canal near the old cement works in Brownhills. This is an odd bridge, and now conveys national cycle route 5 from the canal below to the former level crossing at Engine Lane. It has odd, reduced level parapets and a very scant guard rail, but has been well-known to generations of Brownhills Kids. Here, looking west, it could have easily been a summer evening; not a soul about and just the sound of ducks and coots in the reeds. A peaceful spot.

November 27th – today, I have a cold and didn’t feel too much like exerting myself. I finally forced myself out as the daylight was dying, and after a surprisingly energetic thrash over the common, I headed north over Chasewater. The moon – not quite new, I think, but quite slender – and clear air made for a decent sunset. It’s been a long time since I went round Chasewater in the dark, and I forgot how exhilarating and beautiful it could be.

November 26th – Now, this has snagged my interest. Spinning out through Lichfield after lunch, I cycled down Wheel Lane. I’ve never noticed these two dramatic, intricate semis before; there has to be a story here. I don’t think they’re as old as one might think; those chimney pots and chimneys look inter-war to me, yet the apparent timber frame looks old. I just love them; the one on the right looks to have been repointed recently – that must have been an intricate job.

Anyone know anything about them?

November 26th – Passing through Lichfield for lunch, I spotted this unusual shot across the rooftops from the car park at the rear of Bakers Lane. Lichfield is such a photographed city that sometimes it can be hard to find an original angle. I like this one, because it shows how busy the roofline of the city is, and how, from many angles downtown, St. Mary’s dwarfs the cathedral. I would imagine that realisation has annoyed the odd lofty cleric from time to time…

November 26th – The unseasonably warm weather is providing some unexpected surprises, one of the most visible of which is the profusion of fungi still appearing on a daily basis. The fly agaric by the canal at Newtown, in Brownhills, are still in fine fettle and throwing up new caps daily, while the blumells near Shenstone Park look fresh and tasty. Alonside these are a whole host of others – polypores, brackets, puffballs, ceps and caps. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a good year for the mycology.