beautiful – Page 18 – BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking

#365daysofbiking Secret pathways

May 28th – I note the pathway on Clayhanger Common between the overflow by the bridge and the grassed area behind is nearly overgrown again.

Every season this delightful, overgrown desire path through the scrub very nearly disappears, but is kept in existence by whoever uses it regularly (and that appears to be sometimes, at least, deer.)

Right now it’s at the stage when any use involves breaking off bits of overgrowth. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

I love the almost secret garden feel of it.

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#365daysofbiking I dream in colour

May 27th – Just north of Brewood, following a short, sharp shower and for a few very short moments, nature showed me something gorgeous.

You have to have the rain to have the magic of a rainbow…

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#365daysofbiking Stopping to smell the flowers

May 26th – On a weary recovery day, I pottered to Brownhills on an errand, and passed the canoe centre at Silver Street.

Although not as beautifully maintained as it once was – the planted boat has been left to wild and weed over – the poppies and other flowers growing on the embankment are gorgeous.

Some days it’s about distance, some days it’s about stopping at the wayside to admire the flowers…

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#365daysofbiking The wind that shakes…

May 23rd – Seemingly very early to me, but probably not: The barley is growing beautifully in the fields all around us at the moment. Every year seems to have a different crop that local farmers major on, and this year beans and alley seem to be the popular choices.

Barley is an odd crop aesthetically: it’s spiny heads interact with the wind in a beautiful way and the colours are stunning, yet close up it seems almost hostile and maybe just a bit insect-like.

Either way, it’s a sign of the rapidly advancing summer and made for a lovely sight on a beautiful morning.

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#365daysofbiking By any other name

May 22nd – One of the joys of late spring and well into summer are the various varieties and colours of wild roses that populate wastelands, hedgerows, thickets and any edgeland that’s relatively sun-blessed and open.

In Telford on the way to a client meeting, the cycleway from the station to Hortonwood is lined with splashes of pink – from pale, almost white to deep, deep almost purple. And without exception, they smell divine.

Unlike cultivated roses in parks and gardens, these wayside stars get little or no care and just do their own, dishevelled thing – and to me that’s far more beautiful than some preened and nurtured hybrid.

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#365daysofbiking Don’t break the chain

May 20th – Laburnum is a beautiful tree. Of the same family as wisteria, with similarly structured but different coloured blossom, golden chain as it is often called was for many years was a staple of parks, gardens and urban public spaces.

Sadly, the seeds are very, very poisonous, and after a number of well publicised poisoning cases in the 80s many hundreds of these trees were cut down.

A few though, remain and this one at Shelfield was looking particularly fine as I returned from work on a grey evening.

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#365daysofbiking Urban wonders

May 17th – More wildflowers today: Clover, ox-eye daisies and and one I can’t identify with lovely small delicate white flowers.

Again, all of these examples are on a quiet, otherwise anonymous industrial estate, populating the grass verges.

The wonder of nature.

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#365daysofbiking Now clear and still

May 16th – The green aura continues along the canal, with only blossom puncturing the seamless, endless bright emerald green copses and hedgerows between Walsall Wood and Brownhills.

I’m glad to note, however, that one patch of green seems to be fading and dissipating – the algal bloom that’s been present on the Brownhills canal for months.

It was perfectly natural, and is totally organic in nature – but it did look ugly, I must say. Now dying back, today Catshill Junction was fairly clear and millpond still – whereas for the past weeks it’s been like a bright green, unpleasant soup.

Nice to see clear water again.

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#365daysofbiking Contrasts

May 15th – Continuing the wildflower theme, there’s a riot of colour on the less-frequently mown verges ate the moment: Daisies, vetch, trefoil, buttercups, and on this one outside where I work, every tiny, absolutely tiny bright red poppies.

Look closely and there are colours from white to dark blue, yellow to red.

My favourite time of year. Everything is growing and clamouring for attention. I just wish they didn’t mow the grass so often!

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#365daysofbiking Lupin the loop

May 14th – On Monday I said there were new wildflowers every day now. As if to confirm it on the way home, by the new pond in Clayhanger, the first of the season’s lupins, which have been growing wild here since I was a kid.

Ironically I searched in vain for one of these yesterday in the same area, so the growth must be coming on fast now.

I love these beautiful, deeply coloured purple blooms; there are also a pink variety here that flower later.

Soon be time for the orchids, too…

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