Tag: Brownhills

#365daysofbiking The trains don’t run here anymore:

September 7th – The weather was still grey and unpleasant, cold with a sharpening wind and summer seemed a long way behind me. But I felt like a bit of an explore on the way home so I hopped up onto the old South Staffordshire Railway that carried freight when I was a kid.

Carefully restored and maintained by Back the Track as a cycling and walking greenway, it’s peaceful up there and as Vivian Stanshall put it, you’re nestling in green nowhere.

There are good views of the canal, Clayhanger Marsh and Ryders Mere, and plenty of birds and wildlife to spot.

It’s also home to one of the most mournful monuments to a lost railway I know: The solitary remaining signal post of Norton Junction.

Still, the ladder makes a great vantage point for photographing the marsh…

#365daysofbiking Spirit of the water

August 30th – Returning home at sunset after a long day I noticed that Autumn is now encroaching. The evenings feel chilly and damp, although not yet cold; the greenery has the beginnings of the season’s golden jacket and things just look duller.

Still it was beautiful, and nice to see the canal so full after the leak in the summer.

#365daysofbiking 1000 shades of grey

August 27th – I was not really any better, and with a keen wind and grey skies I didn’t go far, just a loop of Chasewater.

The North Heath is beautiful at the moment and I don’t spend nearly enough time up here these days: The heather is beautifully purple and despite the murk, there is a lot of greenery and colour.

But still, the day was damp and grey.

#365daysofbiking Hello darkness my old friend

August 26th – it was a dreadful, wet day and I still wasn’t well. I was busy at home with things that had needed doing for ages, and I slipped out after dark for a spin around a dripping, sodden town.

I hate this weekend, every year; it’s OK if the weather’s good and you can ride, but if it’s grey and horrible it’s so depressing. It always feels like the end of summer, even if it’s nowhere near.

Riding was actually good, and the somnambulant town was quiet in the gathering night. With the new houses, Church Road is probably the most atmospheric it’s been for years, and Coppice lane wears it’s loneliness like an old jacket.

Still can’t get a night photo of Morris I’m happy with, though…

August 25th – A good deed for the day. Heading out, I noticed for the second time this year, a pwood pigeon downed in the canal near Ogley Hay. 

I was unaware wood pigeons couldn’t swim until I found one in the canal near Oldbury in the summer – they float, but just drift and will clearly drown before long. I rescued that one, but it was difficult as I had nothing to get it close enough to grab from the water. In response to that I now carry a length of thin rope which I held both ends of and tossed the loop over and beyond the stuck bird.

Gently pulling it to the bank, I took the pigeon from the water, and popped him under the hedge to dry out, poor thing.

Funny how I’ve never seen this before and find two within a few months.

August 24th – I nipped to Stonnall on my way home, and the view from Shire Oak was a gorgeous as ever when I passed: I’ll never tire of that view of the Ladies of the Vale over the quarry and rolling countryside to Wall.

On my return to Brownhills, dusk was falling, and the new flats at Anchor Bridge glowed well as the dying sunlight caught the damp tarmac.

August 20th – One of the sad but beautiful signs of a closing summer is toadflax, otherwise known as butter and eggs. This beautiful plant, in shades of yellow, white and orange will be common now in hedges and on towpath fringes until October.

It’;s a lovely thing but it does make me sad for a season passed.

August 19th – One of the more startling recolonisations of recent years has been the teasel. This dramatic, prehistoric looking plant grows a familiar, spiny seedhead beloved of small songbirds, particularly finches, but the name teasel comes from its industrial use as a comb for ‘teasing’ wool into thread.

When I was young these were a rarity around here, and I never saw one of these tall plants until adulthood. Now, thankfully, they are profuse and in lots of wayside hedges, scrubs, meadows and field-margins – which is helping the bird population.

August 19th – Talking of the harvest, at Home Farm, Sandhills, the cornfield I’d captured the rainbow and remarkable sunset from a few weeks ago has now been harvested, and the stubble, still golden in the overcast day, is awaiting ploughing back in. 

My favourite tree – my marker for the seasons, the horse Chestnut by the farmhouse – is clearly laden with conkers.

What a fantastic summer and season this has been. Just what I needed.