Tag: commute

#365daysofbiking Shroom for improvement

Monday November 23rd 2020 – It’s not been a good autumn for fungi, if I’m honest. The weather was pretty dry and many of the usual damp-loving species popped up at the wrong time or not at all. I saw very few decent fly agaric, no Japanese or shaggy parasols, and very few ink caps.

But as I noted today when the frost of the night before had passed, there are some examples about. This cap I couldn’t identify had clearly been broken and lay downside up on the grass verge outside work.

The gills and the detail in them are absolutely beautiful.

It’s nice to be reminded of the beauty of toadstools now and again. Hope they have a better season next year.

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#365daysofbiking This is not my homecoming

Friday November 20th 2020 – I’d been in Birmingham and returned early evening on Friday. It wasn’t late, maybe 7-7:30pm. Shire Oak Crossroads, a homecoming beacon for me for decades with it’s brightly lit pub, frenetic traffic and air of hilltop crossing has always been special to me.

For one thing, it means the journey from here is almost completely downhill and I can coast. But it also means I’m very nearly back home and I love to see the lights and busy but patient traffic at night.

Except at the moment, during the second lockdown, there is surprisingly little traffic and the pub whose welcoming lights I cherish sits in darkness, forbidden from opening.

This is not the homecoming I love. This feels desolate, empty and almost nightmarish.

I’ve talked a lot about steadying influences and anchors the last few weeks here. This is one I rely on usually that has sort of gone – well not gone, but been temporarily lost. And it affects me more than I would imagine.

It’s now like a symbol of the times.

Ah well, these days will pass. They have to.

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#365daysofbiking Bright in the dark

Wednesday November 18th 2020 – Another place that looks beautiful at night like Chasetown is Walsall Wood.

Whatever the time of year or weather, the High Street always looks welcoming and bright at night, and despite being a town these days, still retains a village atmosphere.

Stopping on the canal bridge and taking a few minutes to admire the combination of shop lights and traffic is a nice restorative on a grim commute home.

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#365daysofbiking Endless rain


Monday November 16th 2020 – I’m getting a bit fed up of the wet weather right now. Can it stop please?

Morris, the Brownhills miner doesn’t mind though. He’s stainless steel, and shiny and bright whatever the weather.

Bless him.

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#365daysofbiking Sheen

Thursday November 12th 2020 – Heading home from an afternoon at work and the weather was grim: Blustery and damp.

I took a different route home to usual, to tack along the wind. I stopped on the crest of Clayhanger Bridge to adjust my jacket and looked behind me towards the Lindon Road.

That night-sheen of wet tarmac. It doesn’t matter how bad things are, or how grim the location, there’s something attractive about it. It fascinates and captivates me.

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#365daysofbiking These days will surely pass

Tuesday November 10th 2020 – Autumn seems to have lasted for ages this year, and at the same time, seems to have passed in the blink of an eye; but then, it doesn’t seem five minutes since I was delighting in daffodils here in Kings Hill Park, but this most unusual of years has passed quickly.

I’m hoping the future holds a return to some kind of normality, but for now, my traditional anchors keep me stable, and as November ticks away and turns to my least favourite season Winter, I look to the changeless things to keep me going.

My beloved twin sisters are still watching over Wednesbury and the last of the golden leaves are now falling. They have seen this season many times, those spires and they will yet see many more. They have witnessed war, disease, boom and recession; Christenings, weddings, funerals and the Sunday worship of generations. They know as I do that these days will surely pass.

So I look to them and feel comforted that in unsteady times, there are still my anchors to rely on, here in my beloved Black Country.

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#365daysofbiking Acceptance

Tuesday November 3rd 2020 – A better day with milder weather and better cycling. I crossed Kings Hill Park on an errand, and stopped to admire the autumn colour.

There comes a point in autumn where you have no choice but to roll over and accept the darkness and cold, and just get on with it – but the consolation is always the colour and what the season does to favourite places like this park.

Autumn isn’t too bad once you stop fighting it, and then it becomes stunningly beautiful.

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#365daysofbiking Hiding in the dark

Monday November 2nd 2020 – A windy, wet day with little to commend it. I took this photo from Catshill Junction bridge in the pitch dark on a long exposure and it’s not great, but does show the movement in the skyline well.

It was a foul, wet night – it’s rare I leave the towpath to hit the High Street due to mud and slipperiness but I did tonight.

But one thing redeemed the shot: I never realised the swan family were there, hiding in the dark.

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#365daysofbiking Suffocation

Thursday, October 29th 2020 – I had to visit a store at Walsall’s Crown Wharf shipping Centre – a peculiar, strip parade out of town centre that was curiously built in the town centre.

Crown Wharf is awful: Like all parade malls, it surrounds it’s own car park and seems isolated from the town outside, and has sucked the life and larger stores from Park Street a hundred yards away, which is the town’s Main Street.

It’s incredibly brightly lit at night, and the trees on the Wolverhampton Road frontage have lights in all year around, giving a night-time feel of the worst kind of Christmas shopping all year around.

Crown Wharf is one of those odd, turn of the millennium regeneration projects that didn’t regenerate anything much, and seems cursory and contemptuous of it’s host town and environment, almost as if the architects and designers had learned nothing from Merry Hill twenty years before: A mall surrounded by industrial decay that only served to further suffocate the small towns around it.

I did what I had to, and left. I hate this place.

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#365daysofbiking Last of the year

Wednesday, October 28th 2020 – Over in Darlaston, the parks – Victoria and Kings Hill – are gorgeous in their seasonal jackets. I notice there are still beautiful flowers in bloom in the planters at Kings Hill, and the fallen leaves make for lovely colours in these vital, hidden gems.

I will always shout up for the parks in Darlaston: They get very little attention and they are such a lovely part of the town.

A real spirit lifter on the way to work.

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