Tag: bad weather

#365daysofbiking Mist but not missed


January 22nd – This is a very strange winter we’re having. I hope spring and summer prove more traditional. It’s not really been very cold, but it’s been horrendously wet. I’m so used to rain now that it barely surprises or bothers me, and I think I’m developing a love of it, like some weird meteorological Stockholm syndrome.

At the moment, the warm damp is masquerading as a heavy, cloying mist-drizzle that’s settled here for the best part of a week, really. It’s grimy and horrible to ride in, and is also keeping the fumes and smell down from the local landfills and industry, making the whole atmosphere feel dirty and polluted.

Leaving Bloxwich station I passed a couple of the town’s many backstreet boozers: The venerable Romping Cat, as classic a Black Country pub as one could find, and the more boisterous Spotted Cow, which despite a chequered history, hangs on as a popular local’s pub.

In the murky, nasty mist they looked beautifully warm and welcoming. I could have slipped in there and then for a pint.

But this wasn’t 1995, and that isn’t the current version of me. So I admired these watering holes from the street, remembered fondly long gone days with workmates and their many, many post-work pints, then rode home.

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#365daysofbiking Lighting the way

January 19th – A murky, misty, unpleasant day really. It was cold, and although the sun threatened to come through, it never really did here which was a disappointment.

I pottered around Brownhills and Chasewater, looking for good photos but the light was much worse than I was expecting it to be. But there were some good shots.

I was expecting it to make me feel better today, and for once, it didn’t.

Days like today make spring seem a very long way off.

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#365daysofbiking Trapped in my steelwork

January 13th – Spring ended with a bump. Leaving a meeting in Birmingham late afternoon it was wet, windy and cold.

On a deserted platform at New Street I waited for a train home. The service seems to have improved a little. It was only five minutes late. And mercifully warm. Praise the lord.

I was half expecting to be buttonholed by West Midlands Mayor Andy Street on the train on the way home, explaining how hard he’d worked to sort the trains out and how I should therefore vote for him.

Thankfully, I wasn’t harassed by Brum’s very own Charles Hawtrey tribute, but it did take a while to get back. As I stood with my bike on the train, gently and rhythmically rattling over miles of steel through the January night, I felt down that there were still weeks of wet, cld and dark commutes like this still ahead.

But they will end, the light will always creep through. The steel, light and shine of New Street by night will once more be a rare treat, and not the trap it seemed like this evening.

Tonight it just looked frighteningly inevitable.

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#365daysofbiking One step forward, two splashes back

January 9th – It had been drying up since Christmas, the towpaths were getting nicely rideable again.

Sadly, overnight and during the day, the rains came again.

Back to square one, I guess…

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#365daysofbiking Mud larks

January 7th – This mud. It’s getting worse. It’s in everything, like a damaging, abrasive jelly, corroding metal, clogging up mechanisms and generally bringing the bike down.

I felt I should wash the bikes to remove the worst, so I did at the weekend. I was kind of scared of what I might find underneath.

2 days on an it’s like they were never cleaned at all.

It’s going to take a lot of work to get these steeds back up to scratch this spring. I’ll have my work cut out, clearly.

I expect whole biomes will be developing in the crud by then.

Oh the mud, what larks…

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#365daysofbiking Starstruck

December 27th – Back in Brownhills I turned back in the gloom to look at Morris, splendid even on this unpleasant evening.

He doesn’t mind the rain, he’s maid of stainless steel. He’s constructed to shine whatever the conditions. And in the murk tonight, with Christmas lights behind him, Morris was a splendid symbol of home with more than a little star quality about him.

I think I should be more… Morris.

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#365daysofbiking A hidden gem

December 27th – It was a grim, grey afternoon and I had to go to Erdington – of all places – on an errand. I saddled up and headed my usual route over Shire Oak, down the Chester Road and through the leafy private estates of Little Aston to Sutton Park and on.

It was a foul, wet afternoon, with little to commend it. But I did stop for a breather at Little Aston Church, a really fine example of GE Street’s devotional and elegant design in an interestingly bright stone.

I have to say, it was the most handsome thing about the day.

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#365daysofbiking Fading from view

December 26th – Returning down The Parade into Brownhills, a mist was rising and rain was falling. It was a miserable night.

The lights and mist combined though, and there was something eerily magical – if not a little unsettling – about it.

I was glad to get home.

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#365daysofbiking Risen again

December 25th – At Chasewater, I noticed how close to overtopping the weir the reservoir is again, despite the outflow valve to the spillway being open.

That’s a remarkable indication of the state of the recent weather: Naturally, more water is flowing in to the pool than is flowing out. And that’s a considerable amount.

You know what I want for Christmas? A dry spell.

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#365daysofbiking Taking a toll

December 22nd – I’ve not been riding back from Shenstone or Lichfield much this winter, and the backlands are not the familiar haunts they were, so it was a shock to me on Bullmoor Lane and Cranebrook Lane that they were flooded, breaking up or deep in mud in quite a few places.

Going was tough and wet.

When this weather breaks there’s going to need to be a lot of cleaning and investment to fix the roads.

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