Tag: Anchor Bridge

December 16th – Heading back into Brownhills mid evening, the roads were oddly still busy, the traffic through the High Street heavy and challenging. Emergency vehicles came through, perhaps an accident, or perhaps just the normal buzz of life.

I was tired. It had been a long week. But a pleasant meal and evening with workmates had been enjoyable.

A weekend, and three days to go. I just need to hang in there.

December 16th – On my return from work, I hopped on the canal at Walsall Wood, and enjoyed the peaceful darkness as far as Anchor Bridge, where I switched back onto the High Street.

The canal was peaceful, silent, eerie, with only snatches of light in the darkness, my headlamp scything the night as I rode.

But riding in the dark is mentally hard work, and I hadn’t got it in me. For once, the road felt safer, so I took it.

December 12th – On the way back into Brownhills, the air was a little clearer, so I stopped on Anchor Bridge for a classic nighttime Brownhills photo.

As well as playing about with aperture settings of late, I’ve discovered exposure compensation. Must say I think the darker image is the better of the two.

One day I must read up on what all these adjustments actually do…

December 5th – A horrid day to ride, and even worse for taking photos. There was thick, patchy fog and the air was wet, and well below freezing. Every time I took the camera out, the lens fogged up.

The driving was mad, and as I rode down Shire Oak into Brownhills, I felt glad to be near home, soon to be out of the cold and horrible traffic.

Winter has arrived with a vengeance.

ISeptember 22nd – It was a pleasant but slightly chilly evening as I slipped out for a test circuit of Brownhills after a little bike maintenance. I’d forgotten my camera when I went to work, and was still without it, so I gave the phone lens a polish and had a go.

Cameras on phones haven’t half come on in the past few years.

February 14th – A sunset spin around Brownhills on a bitingly cold, but thankfully dry afternoon. This is again the season of good fine sunsets, and cold days like these are usually rewarding. Chasewater was as beautiful as ever, but the beauty caught Newtown and the canal, too, and it was a pleasure to cycle in. Hopefully with the lengthening days and drier weather I can get up on the Chase soon. I’m so missing it, but since Christmas it’s been so muddy it’s been very difficult going from what I’ve heard.

Evenings like this make me optimistic that the current spell of bad weather will be settling down soon.

February 7th – On my return, I cycled back down the canal into Brownhills. My favourite tree near Home Farm at Sandhills is handsome even when bare, and it doesn’t seem long now until I see it in leaf once more – but there seems to be a lot of bad weather to go through yet before those warm, sunny spring days return.

On the towpaths, the mud has to be seen to be believed, and at Anchor Bridge in particular, the rotting leaf litter her has made a slimy, hazardous goop which is hard and unpleasant to ride through – until things dry out a bit, take care!

February 5th – Yet again on a Friday, I found myself cruising down from Shire Oak into Brownhills. The wind had indeed been evil, but was at least now more or less at my back. I had to stop to answer the phone on Anchor Bridge, and while I was chatting I noticed the view, from the very bridge I was contemplating the night before. This slope here is more or less continuous from Shire Oak, and the road here is wide. Where I was stood in years gone by would have been a toll house, and when I was a kid there would have been grim maisonettes here and over the road, a large tower block. Now, it’s new build and an old folk’s home.

These days, this view seems utterly familiar, but twelve or so years ago, it would have been totally different. It struck me as I put the phone away that change is ongoing, and so granular that one hardly notices it happening.

February 4th – I came back to Brownhills late, and hopped on the canal from Walsall Wood. Leaving the towpath at the Anchor Bridge, I realised how odd the landscape is here. The canal, of course, remains level (473ft above mean sea level for the anoraks out there), yet the landscape rises above it gently, and the Chester Road crosses above with barely and undulation.

It made me wonder if the canal was channelled out here and what the landscape of the late 1700s looked like before it arrived. 

The night was chilly and blustery and I was tired. I suddenly realised I’d been stood for five minutes or more in pitch darkness contemplating the physical geography here absent mindedly, whilst freezing cold.

Cycling catches you like that sometimes.