April 24th – A short exercise ride, still working from home, mostly. Despite the strangeness in everyday human society, the natural world continues as normal.
Nice to see the moorhens pairing off to mate. Such humble, unassuming little birds.
I keep saying it, but it’s the normal, beautiful events of spring that are keeping me going day to day at the moment.
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April 23rd – Something odd is happening. Well, lots of odd things really with the current pandemic that has seen changes that just six months ago would have been unthinkable.
But what’s interesting me is small, almost unnoticed shifts in national opinion.
The outpouring of wholly justified love and respect for the NHS is one such case in point. Rewinding that six months, I bet lots of folk in love with it now would have been at best ambivalent towards out state healthcare system back then..
Years of attrition from some political quarters had let to our National Health Service – something that’s saved my life on three occasions and I have always been a staunch advocate for – being treated as a Cinderella, and something to be improved or that was inadequate, or failing.
In a heartbeat, that’s all changed. Pro-NHS sentiment and memes are spilling off social media into real life. The UK is once again, painfully aware of the value of what we have and what we need to protect.
Here at the old Duckhams Bridge near Stubbers Green, an anonymous hand is echoing a love we all now share.
At a stroke, some political positions have become untenable overnight.
If nothing else about this awful time is positive, this new found regard for those who work to care for us and the service they work within may well be.
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April 21st – The evening exercise rides are getting a bit samey and I think I need to vary my palette a wee bit – but it’s quite hard with beauty like this not five minutes out of town.
I took a spin up to Ogley Junction from Brownhills: Just a short, lazy loop from Silver Street. The canal and fields near home farm looked spendid in the warm, softening evening sun.
Machinery is once more on the half-ploughed field, which is interesting, and the oilseed rape is now in full bloom, too.
I never, ever tire of this place. It’s so gorgeous.
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April 20th – I see on the canal near Walsall Wood that the sallow trees are coming into blossom. These spiny female catkins will soon start spewing huge amounts of fluff.
Sallow or goat willow is a member of the wider willow family, and grows profusely hereabouts. After the initial pretty male catkins have passed – pussy willows – then come the female catkins that you can see here. Once these peculiar green flowers pollinate, they generate wind-borne seeds in a few weeks: these evolve in the form of a large cloud of fluff that for a few days will coat the canal, towpaths, woodland paths, verges and road margins.
Sallows are not the only willow to do this peculiar thing, but they are certainly the largest group to do it hereabouts.
Bizarre, but fun…
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#365daysofbiking Ducks deluxe:
April 19th – Another first for the year on a short afternoon ride out to test the bike and legs. I’d had a go at sorting a creak in the bottom bracket, but it was still grumbling.
Although bright and sunny, there was still a chill in the air.
On the canal in Walsall Wood, my first ducklings of the year – seven balls of mallard fluff squeaking and doing their best to stick with proud mum.
This is always such a joy to see. Look forward to more of it, and goslings, too.
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April 17th – Near Newtown, just near the A5 bridge on the canal, another wonderful sign of spring on a grey afternoon: The swans are nesting here.
This is the first nest I’ve seen in this spot and I think it’s probably the mystery couple from last year who suddenly seemed to appear with hatched chicks, which I think had been incubated in a nest out of sight behind a moored boat.
I noted one bird was supervising while the other did the work. I have no doubt that if the one watching could have folded its wings, it would have done…
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April 16th – Life may be on hold at the moment, but Brownhills has been steadily changing and improving for a few years now, and I can’t see that process slowing up much, even with the current unpleasantness caused by coronavirus.
A few short years ago the view up the canal from Silver Street towards Catshill Junction would have been blighted by the empty market place and waste ground where Silver Court Gardens once stood, a set of five tenement blocks that really were quite grim.
But now the view of houses and trees in blossom over limpid, peaceful water is a world away from those bad days.
And I continue to watch my community evolve.
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April 14th – On the way to work on a sunny morning, I passed the new pond at Clayhanger on the canal. I noticed that the pear tree there is currently in blossom.
Pear blossom is subtly different to apple, which comes a bit later and has pink tinges, and to cherry, which is generally smaller, denser and more uniform.
The white flowers against the blue sky again made for a brilliant contrast, and improved my mood no end.
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April 13th – Dusk, on the canal. The bite of a chilly spring evening. The sound of wind, waterfowl grumbling and no traffic at all.
I realised that for the first time in weeks, nobody else was on the canal towpath. I was alone.
Since the lockdown, people have taken to canals for exercise and walking in a way I’ve never seen before – which is good: I really want people who don’t know the beauty of local canals to come and share it.
But it’s still nice to find myself here, alone, but accompanied by my thoughts and feelings. It it at moments like this I feel least alone.
I stood enjoying it for quite a while.
Realising I was shivering, I got on my bike and rode back home.
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#365daysofbiking Nest option:
April 9th – Also a welcome and cheering part of spring are the antics of the waterfowl. Not so much the riotous, anarchic mating of the mallards, but the pairing off, nestbuilding and sitting of the other waterfowl – coots, moorhens, Canada geese and swans.
Mrs. Coot was clearly very pleased with this spot as I rode off to work along the canal.
It’ll be nice to see chicks again.
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BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 