Tag: Brownhills

April 13th – I spotted her on the way home, something I don’t think I’ve seen before, a Canada goose nest. From my vantage point on the opposite side of the canal, I couldn’t decide at the time if she was sitting a nest, or just resting. It’s clearly the former, looking at the material underneath her.

This nest is right on the canalside behind the factories on Maybrook Road, between Walsall Wood and Brownhills. My goodness, she’s vulnerable to foxes there.

Lovely to see, though. Hope she’ll be OK.

April 10th – Down at the Warehouse, Where the Lichfield Road and Barracks Lane Cross, a horse’s neigh from where the Staffordshire Hoard found Hammerwich, some beautiful flowers by the horse pasture. Forget me nots, wallflowers, blackcurrant, daffodils, hyacinth and others vie for attention in a busy hedgerow.

A gorgeous sight on what was a blustery, rather cold day.

April 9th – A short spin from Brownhills to Newtown and back was under the most peculiar spring weather – bright sunshine but with a dark and very threatening sky, To catch it’s glory I came back from Newtown along the canal to Brownhills, and was fascinated by the eastern skies.

This place is beautiful. Never let anyone tell you different. Even when the weather is poor.

April 9th – I passed this tiled mural late this afternoon, and finally recorded it as I’ve been intending to do since starting this journal all those years ago. It’s a simple, tiled inset in an otherwise blank shopfront wall next to AE Poxon Butchers, High Street, Brownhills. It shows, obviously, a bucolic scene of the kind of livestock the proprietor purveys – set in rolling, beautiful countryside.

Curiously, no chickens.

This is old. Really old. Poxon’s is an old company and a very old shop. This has been here certainly as long as I can remember, and much longer than that. I know nothing of who painted it or if it’s significant in anything more than as a local curiosity.

It’s a lovely thing, for sure, and a bit of Brownhills heritage.

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!

March 30th – A better day all round – and as if to cement that, fruit blossom on Clayhanger Common. I believe this to be the flower of wild plum, which were growing in this spot for the past few years. The flowers are beautiful, and gladdened my heart on my journey to Walsall Wood on an errand. 

The towpaths were drying out, geese and ducks honked joyfully on the canal and everything seemed just a tad warmer. 

I often say ‘tomorrow’s another day’ and so it was. From the low finish of Tuesday into a brighter day.

March 29th – It never rains but it pours. After a period of quite grim ill health, things became a bit more complicated over Easter, and I’m beginning to wonder if life will ever return to normal. But of course, it will – it always does.

So it was into a wet, post-rain landscape that I slipped out into at dusk after a chaotic, frenetic day. Nothing was working, I was in some discomfort and I was exhausted. I was heading for Chasewater, and had looped up through Catshill Junction along saturated towpaths. In fading light, cold and with wet legs I decided to cut the expedition off at Chase Road and head back for Brownhills.

Some days you’re glad just to make it through in one piece.

March 26th – Not a great day – squally, wet, windy with periods of heavy rain. It brightened up as I slipped out for the last dusk before British Summer Time commenced, and I caught the wonderful, intemperate sunset from Silver Street, looking over the canal.

For an ostensibly ugly place, Brownhills sure can take your breath away.

March 26th – Ah, spring’s escapement lurches, and the wheels of the season click forward a notch – the swans are nesting again at the Watermead Estate in Brownhills.

They seem to be in the same spot as last year, which is pretty well protected from vermin and out of reach of all but the most determined threat; I can’t be sure it’s the same birds, but it seems likely as a pair have nested here near the houses and canoe club for a good few years now. 

Last year’s brood was large and successful – let’s hope for the same this year, and mum seems to be sitting already!