April 11th – I wasn’t feeling great, so a short spin out over Castle Hill and back to Brownhills up the Chester Road.
In the last day, the Spanish bluebells had come out in the hedgerow near Fishpond wood, and as usual with this colony they ranged in shade from blue, to pink, to white.
A gorgeous spectacle on a day when I didn’t feel great.
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April 21st – I don’t think I’ve ever known a spring like this – someone has fired a starting gun, and on this generally sunny afternoon ride to Burton so many flowers were either out or coming out that it was astounding.
I have never seen hawthorn in flower at the same time as blackthorn. The wild garlic is out when there are still daffodils. Bluebells are about too. It’s absolutely gorgeous out there.
A long, sunny afternoon ride, stopping to inspect the flowers was just what I needed.
How I love this time of year.
April 23rd – In the sun, it was warm, but otherwise another cold, quite windy day with very bright sunshine. I headed out on a beautiful St George’s day and found the English countryside at it’s springtime peak. Trees verdant, coconut-smelling gorse lined lanes; bluebell woods were a carpet of strident violet and orange tip butterflies mated in the hedgerows.
Even the oak plum galls growing in profusion near Hilton were sort of beautiful, in the slightly unnerving way only these parasite generated growths can be.
Again, I’d appreciate a bit more warmth, but not a bad day at all, and a lovely ride.
April 13th – Spring flowers are coming thick and fast now, from dead nettles to bluebells, both Spanish and English lining the hedgerows, edge lands and verges.
Spotted at Shire Oak, some beautiful sights just growing in a mundane, roadside here that most would just pass by.
There’s beauty out there in profusion if we’re open to it.
April 5th – The season is moving on at such a pace now, it’s very hard to keep up. Another first this morning near Clayhanger Common, my first bluebells of 2017 in a patch of spring snowflakes. Yes, they’re Spanish rather than their more delicate English cousins, but that dash of blue-violet is unmistakable and soon the woods and hedgerows will be a rash of vivid colour once more.
Welcome back, old friends.
April 30th – So, there I’d done gone and promised to bring ny ill mate the best of summer, and it rains, and blows, and hails on a very blustery, intemperate Saturday. Just where do you find the beauty?
You slip out as the worst is passed, and get your feet gloriously wet in the local bluebell wood, and remember what it is to be alive in the outdoors, with the smell of wet earth, pollen and rising sap.
Just wish the light wasn’t so poor.
April 25th – A 45 miler over to Walton on Trent and back through Lullington on what started as quite a bright afternoon but soon turned to rain. I got soaked, several times. It was cold. But the riding was quite fast, and nature really is trying to call on the warmer days – the oilseed rape is out, I found an isolated bluebell wood, birds and animals are busy, and even a few daffodils are hanging on.
I was really interested to note at Wetleyhay north of Whittington that there are many, many solar panels being erected in the fields there to form solar farms. Great to see, and can only be a good thing for the environment and our energy security.
April 2nd – Elsewhere around Clayhanger and Brownhills on this golden afternoon, momma swan was still giving me the evil eye from her nest on the canalside by the Watermead estate, but she did pause to stand and turn her eggs. The crested grebe still seems happy pottering on the canal near Walsall Wood, and continuing the mad, unsynchronised spring Spanish bluebells are flowering in a hedgerow at Clayhanger Common.
Spring is well underway, it’s warming up at last and everything is starting. Fantastic!
May 4th – A run out in the afternoon didn’t reward me with the good weather I was expecting. It was lightly sunny (but mostly overcast), but not terribly warm, and whilst the day wasn’t the big, bad wolf of yesterday, it still had lupine tendencies.
I went out to Hints to explore the Black Brook Valley which I hadn’t done for years. On the way, I spotted a wealth of bright spring flowers.
The weather may not have been brilliant, but these certainly made up for it.
April 17th – Another harbinger of spring: bluebells. First I’ve seen this year, spotted under a hedgerow in Shelfield. OK, they’re imported Spanish ones rather than the more traditional English variety, but they’re coming… and in the same patch, a few white ones for good measure.
Great to see.
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