July 1st – Spotted near Norton Canes, on the edge of a building site, a sign of the season’s advance: Hornbeam seeds growing and ripening in the evening sun.
These are lovely trees with beautiful leaves I used to mistake for beech, and the seeds are beautiful too, hanging in cascades from the branches.
Always worth looking out for.
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365daysofbiking Decent, enough:
October 6th – From the wailing and gnashing of the NIMBYs of Aldridge, anyone would think that the block of apartments planned for the long derelict land right at the bottom of High Street on the Elms Island would be some monstrous, hideous carbuncle that didn’t fit with it’s surroundings at all.
Studying it closely while in the village of 26,000 on Saturday afternoon, I actually decided I quite liked it. I’m not fond of the flat roof, which is a cop out in design terms, but the rest of it is an interesting blend of textures and colours, and is actually quite bland, really. It’s not too big, it certainly doesn’t block light to the hHigh Street as some alleged and it seems a good match for the rather stark pub nearby.
I’m sure the elderly folk it’s built for will enjoy living close to the amenities of the ‘village’ centre, too, and it will help keep the local retailers busy.
It seems a decent thing to me.
#365daysofbiking An impressive span:
September 17th – At Telford, a major step in the contstruction of the new station footbridge has been taken – the deck of the main span over the ring road adjacent has been lifted into place. It’s huge.
I watched it grow from a skeletal form on the central reservation of the road system, to see it glazed clad and wired, and now it spans the roadway in parallel with the facility it is to replace.
As a design, I’m ambivalent, but it will be a much nicer, convenient thing to use. But there’s a long, long way to go yet.
At least it provided the morning commuters with an interesting spectacle.
August 24th – At Chester Road near the Stonnall turning, just before Castlehill, change is afoot. The old quarry with the hardstanding, idle since the 50s after it’s use as a concrete block manufacturing works is now undergoing groundworks for the construction of a new care home.
There have been a number of planning applications for this site over recent times, and permission for a fairly large elderly person’s care facility was granted last year and will involve extensive modifications to the road to mitigate the driveway.
It’ll be interesting to watch this progress.
June 14th – Changing places.
On the left stood Brownhills Market for near enough 25 years. where the low block facing me is was the site of Silver Court Gardens, once the 5th most deprived housing estate in the country.
Not now; a row of new build gables, a block of modern apartments. Silver Street has been transformed. There is life and activity here in what was for several years a barren, windswept wasteland.
I’m glad to see this change, and I welcome the people that will live in these places. New builds, new starts and new people.
Not all change is bad.
March 26th – In Telford for a meeting, the footbridge project continues it’s bizarre stop-start behaviour, baffling to the uninitiated. Piles are bored and concreted now, sheet piling has appeared along the roadside, and a cavity there had been dug – maybe for a pier or lift-well. Steelwork has been driven into the earth and cut to varying lengths, and there a lot of noise and action. But no visible chap yet, and nothing on the Euston Way side of the station at all.
I guess this is one of those puzzling projects that will just sudsy come together, but it’s very intriguing to watch.
January 11th – So that’s how they managed to reclaim the old Servis factory site in Kings Hill.
I didn’t know Roger McGough was still in the Scaffold business…
November 14th – I had to go to Telford, and I was keen to see the work on the footbridge replacement is really moving on apace now.
Sectional fencing is up, footpaths and steps have closed, barriers are up and alternate footways tarmac and ready.
And the sad realisation that a favourite station flowerbed was set to be lost, with an excavator standing by.
Oh well, that’s progress for you…
October 16th – With the sun more or less returned to normal and a ferocious tailwind, I hammered back to Brownhills late afternoon for an appointment. Watching me from the far side of the canal near Silver Street, a familiar character who clearly doesn’t care for my sort much, but that’s a huge bruiser of a cat. A real character.
At the old market place by the Pier Street Bridge, I’m happy to see the housing development is using forward with footings already in for the first houses.
It’ll be so nice to see this place inhabited and alive again.
September 4th – Returning to Brownhills in the evening, I was pleased to note that the development of new housing seems to have finally started on the site of the old market place off Silver Street, with earthmoving plant commencing operations.
Realistically, we have no chance of ever getting the market back, and the space it occupied has lain idle for five years or more. It’s open, sad and dispiriting and the houses being built here will be a great improvement, and will also mean an end to the serial occupation of the site by travellers.
A good thing, a long time coming.
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