Tag: Bridgtown

March 5th – Back to the wet, blustery weather. Escaping after a period of spannering the bike in the afternoon, the rain held off as I rode to the Orbital Centre at Bridgtown on an errand. I used the new road that curls through the industrial area that’s being developed there. It’s fast, but soulless.

This is a good area for such development – former brownfield, with mining and historical contamination issues, this land is scarred, ugly and ideal for the warehouses and factories it’s sprouting. But bless me, it’s a dull ride.

Nothing is on a human scale. Everything built here is huge. Everything is massive, and punctuated by huge amounts of open space.

Modern development is a curious thing.

October 3rd – Bridgtown has my heart. I’m having a bit of a rough time right now, but had to nip to Great Wyrley on my way home, so took the chance to spin over to Sainsbury’s while I was there. That involved a shot through the backstreets of Bridgtown, the sleepy village-within-a-connurbation just off the A5. 

I adore the blue-diamond brick pavements, terraces and shops; it’s intimate, and proud street corner war memorial, and buried away behind the hideous modern hotel, wedged between terrace gable ends, a garden of remembrance I’d never noticed before.

It glowed in the golden hour, with ruby red rosehips, war mural and roses. It seems to have a rather proud caretaker, too. A lovely place.

October 7th – Bridgtown, in Cannock, is a quirky little place. In essence, a former mining community, it exists as a little island all on it’s own. Although it is part of the wider Cannock conurbation, it seems to be separate, and has idiosyncratic, brick-paved side streets full of great victorian terraces. It also a a very distinctive range of shops, and I’ve never worked out quite why. Here, you can buy vintage clothing, Landrover spares, traditional sweets, or a tarot reading. This is a great place, and I’ve never worked out why it’s so unique.