January 21st – This is intriguing and good news. This new factory has been built from scratch on the Clayhanger/Walsall Wood border at Maybrook Road. This company have decided to move here from up north, creating real engineering jobs and bringing its business into the area. What fascinates me is that the occupiers have been moving in for ages now – loads of cranes and lifting equipment here every weekend. I don’t know what they’re doing here, but there must be a lot of heavy gear involved.
January 21st – Another day of challenging weather. Showers, wind, bluster. Just as well I had stuff to do in the daytime and wasn’t feeling that a cycling opportunity was lost because of my other commitments. Spinning out for a lazy bimble round at 6pm, I spun up through Clayhanger, and thought how dark and quiet the village looked so early on a Saturday night. Clayhanger has always had a slightly Midwich-ish, cutoff air about it, being a wee island in the middle of urban greenspace, but tonight it felt quite distinct. Odd.
December 10th – A cold, windy day. I headed out at sunset to explore an autumnal, wet Clayhanger Marsh. Gorgeous as ever, the sunset was quite good over Ryders Mere. Wildfowl were calling and I disturbed the marsh’s old dog fox in the process of bagging a little something for supper. I see that old fella almost every time I come here – we’re familiars, and respect each other from a distance. We often share contemplative moments together. If only he could talk…
November 16th – bit of a dim moment today. Went out without my camera, completely by accident, and spent the day nervously wondering if I’d lost it somewhere. Coming home along the canal from a day of meetings in Telford and the Black Country, I passed the ‘new’ pool at Clayhanger. It seems to be slightly fuller than of late, but it’s sadly sullied by a large quantity of litter, mostly discarded beer cans, at the benches near the canal. I assume it’s the same bunch who have been causing a nuisance on Clayhanger Common. I just can’t understand the mentality of people who do this.
Apologies for the poor quality photos, they were taken on a phone rather than a decent ..camera.
October 13th – Due to the unseasonably warm weather, some plants seem to be confused, and have started flowering again. I believe this antirrhinum shouldn’t be in bloom at this time of year, but there are several of these delightful yellow flowers on the canal bank between the Clayhanger and Black Cock bridges. I’m not sure even if the species is native, or an escapee from domestic gardens, where it’s more commonly known by the name snapdragon. In summer, it’s a favourite of gardeners as a bedding plant.
October 9th – On the other side of the road, on the village side of what would have been the old railway embankment – lies this pond. This is the last vestige of Clayhanger Common’s brownfield past. This pond – now used as a settlement pond for land drainage before it weirs into the Ford Brook – is marked on maps as easy as 1884, and used to lie at the foot of the railway embankment, now long since gone. This limpid, placid pond is testament to a successful land reclamation. The clear waters of today would once have been brackish, polluted and full of refuse.
October 9th – Today was one of those headache-grey autumnal Sundays when evening falls quickly and everything seems kind of dead. I hate days like this. Escaping at 5pm, I took a spin around the common in Brownhills in a desperate attempt to brighten my mood. On Friday, I’d commented that the water level in the new pool in Clayhanger was very low, and that perhaps it was low enough for the stepping stones – laid to reach the central island when the pond was created in 1986 – to be usable again. A tootle round the pond confirmed this to be the case. The stones were laid out of large lumps of masonry the workers had to hand – mostly coping stones from the parapet of the old railway bridge that used to cross the canal nearby. Others lie dotted about in the undergrowth.
October 7th – After the dry summer, lots of bodies of water locally seem to be very low. Last week,end, I noticed Blithfield reservoir was a good few metres short of it’s usual level, and today, I noticed that the new pool near Clayhanger was low, too. When this pond was created25 years ago, there were stepping stones to a central island, which later became submerged. I wonder if the water level will get low enough to expose them again?
August 9th – one of the really encouraging things about the environmental enhancements that saw the reclamation of the Clayhanger refuse tip and slag heap in the early eighties is the way that trees and other flora are becoming well established where once was poisoned, polluted land. On the slopes of the canal bank between the new pool and Clayhanger Bridge there must be 20 or so young, healthy oak trees. Whether they were planted, or grew as a result of the annual guerrilla acorn scattering undertaken by myself and good mate [Howmuch?] over the years is uncertain, but now they’re growing acorns themselves. When ripe they will be collected, stored in coat pockets and cast into hedgerows and field margins as I pass by. Everyone should do this.
July 17th – A spin out over The Swag and Clayhanger Marsh before the rain came. It’s not often I come up into the marsh – the former trackbed for the mineral line makes a good, elevated dry path. The fields were alive with a yellow carpet of ragwort. I had a scramble up the very old slagheaps and took a look at the foreboding scenery before me. It may not be the most beautiful bit of our area, but it’s fascinating and stuffed with rare species.
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