Tag: cycle

April 13th – Back up on the Chase for the first decent, dry ride in what seems like an age. Still the heavy wind, but a joy to fly down Rainbow Hill to Moor’s Gorse.
Note the young bloke who overtakes me. He was absolutely flying. I topped out about 35mph and bottled it. He just floored it. Respect.
Music is Lindsay Buckingham’s ‘Don’t Look Down’ from the chronically overlooked ‘Out of the Cradle’ album. Video is real time.

March 19th – Spring, it seems, has sprung. Not just the daffodils, crocuses and early blossoms, but buds, green shoots and nascent leaves. All taken in one short stretch of the Goscote Valley cycleway on the way to work this morning. 

The verdant young leaves of the hawthorn are particularly wonderful to see…

February 23rd – I was grey and very, very windy when I headed to Chasewater, but it still felt springlike as it was very warm for the time of year. Chasewater was very choppy and largely deserted, but heading back over a drying-out Brownhills Common I noted the paths and tracks were already beginning to self-heal from the felling activity here a few weeks before. I also noted some great information signs, the most interesting point on which was that the felled wood was being used locally. 

This whole project has been beset by poor communications, and had some of this information been available at the outset, much of the hysterical reaction to the works could have surely been prevented.

Hopping on the cycleway at Engine Lane, I noticed someone has been hard at work there, cutting down the undergrowth and overhanging bushes and opened the whole track out – nice one. 

Wonder who was responsible for that? Whoever it was, I salute them.

September 30th – This is incredible – bike geeks will love this. A Fahrrad Manufaktur small wheel bike, spotted on a Solihull bound train. The owner – a beardy, leathery old cycle tourer – said it was one of only 3 in the country. I certainly can’t find any details of this model online. It seems to combine all the disadvantages of a folding bike with the disadvantages of a larger one, but look at the way this is loaded. That’s a remarkable loading technique – note the tea-flask and pannier.

I guess this appeals to the Moulton crowd, and it is a unique, fascinating bike – dynamo lights come on automatically in low light, and it’s rocking a 14 speed Rohlhoff hub, with a Brooks saddle. This is no cheap machine.

Sadly, the owner alighted at Small Heath, and I didn’t get long enough to chat to him about it. But it’s a remarkable steed. I hope I meet him again.

August 6th – I’d been in Darlaston, and returned home via the cycleway down the Goscote Valley. Despite small areas of tipping and litter, it’s lovely at the moment; the pastures and wastelands are bright with willow herb, wort, convulvulus and budleia, and the Ford Brook has tall swathes of Himalayan balsam growing tall. It’s an unwelcome species, but it is gorgeous to look at.

All the way through Goscote I watched two buzzards wheel and soar on the warm breeze. You wouldn’t think this area could be so peaceful and beautiful.

Walsall still has the capacity to surprise.

June 26th – Interesting to see that the unusual solution to bicycle parking employed at Leicester station is now heavily oversubscribed. The station operators expanded to two more carousels, and have now had to put some in the car park, too. It seems almost as if when you create a pleasant, secure facility, people adapt their habits, and use it.

I do hope the people at Birmingham New Street have seen this.

Sadly, a minority still don’t seem to grasp the mechanics of these stands.

February 27th – I like bike cargo hacks. This one was locked in the stand at Telford Station, and is rather well executed. A standard plastic crate, of the kind you can buy at hardware stores and DIY chains, with holes drilled in the bottom. Secured with cable ties, the ensemble only loses points for the untrimmed ties. Love the reflector and rear light attached to the box itself. Wonder what the rider carries?

May 24th – This is the evening commute film from the same trip. Changing trains at New Street, Birmingham, this time for a Walsall bound train, at about 5pm. The crowds, the dreadful lifts, the bustle – not a single part of this interchange will improve with the revamp of New Street, which is primarily about providing a ‘retail opportunity’. Note that the bike is being pushed and not ridden throughout.

The soundtract is from Mainframe, unofficially called ‘I make my way back home’, officially just ‘Track 4’. Check them out at http://mainframe-music.info/– a great blast of eighties synth-goodness, mostly made on an Apple II computer in 1983.