Tag: blocked

#365daysofbiking Lost lanes

August 4th – A lane I’d not really ever registered the existence of disappeared a while ago, without me being aware. This is unusual, as I’m normally fascinated by these things.

School Lane, Little Wyrley was a quiet, winding, lightly used lane with no dwellings between the A5 Watling Street and Gorsey Lane. This whole area of scrubby, grubby not-quite countryside between Brownhills and Great Wyrley is plagued with fly tipping and other antisocial behaviour, but School Lane was particularly badly affected.

Having endured enough, in 2016 [Edit – It’s been closed much longer than this, from at least 2009 – Bob], Cannock Chase Council decided the best way to stop the problem was to gate the lane. Permanently.

This completely passed me by at the time, and I only noticed when it was mentioned in passing a few months ago on social media, so I made a mental note to ride it while I still could. As you can see, nature is now taking over and it’s an odd, but peaceful and wonderfully pollution-free byway disappearing slowly back into the landscape.

Like Dark Lane near Longdon, lost lanes intrigue me no end.

I’m glad I checked this out.

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August 8th – I still can’t get my head around the state of the trees currently blocking the new development’s view of Catshill Junction. This is a Walsall Housing Group project consisting of apartments, sold as ‘canalside’ dwellings – but as far as I can ascertain, most of the properties have no view of the canal itself due to the overgrown thicket in-between.

Such dense vegetation must also make those flats terribly dark. Unusually for Walsall Housing Group, they don’t seem to have any plan to deal with this and integrate their development into the immediate environment. I find this surprising and sad.

And still languishing unloved on the bank, the Catshill Junction Sculpture. 

What a mess.

October 30th – If you’re planning to go for a walk or ride, and part of the route involves getting from the canal to Bentley Mill Way in Walsall, the access steps between the two off the aqueduct are now fenced off and inaccessible, as part of the major roadworks that have closed the road for 13 moths to come.

You can still get down to the road from the Darlaston side, but the route is not pleasant and I’m not sure how long it’ll be before that’s inaccessible too.

Take care folks.

April 18th – A river ran down the A461 Lichfield Road at Sandhills after a moderate shower. Out of all the storm gullies on the Walsall bound side of the hill, only 2 were flowing freely, all the others were blocked with silt. It seems that Tarmac – the contractors looking after the roads for Walsall Council – don’t like to bother cleaning drains. I’m 100% sure that the jobs are passed on, but in four years, I’ve never got a gully cleaned out. I give up, to be honest. Most of the storm drains on Shire Oak’s main roads are blocked.