Cycleway – Page 4 – BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking

#365daysofbiking Into the blue

July 23rd – I was in Birmingham for work and was planning on catching the train home. But there was trouble with the signals and all trains I could have caught were messed up.

I decided to ride home – it was a nice evening, after all. I decided to hit the canal near Lancaster Circus, but heading out of the centre I found the new segregated cycleway up the A3 to Perry Barr. It’s absolutely brilliant. I was so enamoured, I kept on it and rode home over Kingstanding.

It’s fast, largely well thought out, has it’s own traffic signals (with repeaters at bike eye level) and was really quite busy.

Some of the routes over major junctions are a bit tortuous, but it’s far better than I’d ever have imagined.

Sad to see it ends abruptly at Perry Barr, but I suppose with the junction being remodelled there it would be folly to continue it yet.

A fine thing, very pleasing to ride.

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#365daysofbiking Lighting the way

July 12th – Coming off the canal near Rushall Junction and following cycle trail 54 to Walsall through Yew Tree, the cycleway between the farm and housing estate is marked in darkness by little solar powered cats eyes.

How fabulous is that?

A joy to ride.

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#365daysofbiking Route canal

July 12th – Wanting to ride the city canals the day before but unable to, I broke out of work, collected a mate and went for a spin down the Plants Brook/Newhall Valley and into Brum, returning via the Tame Valley.

The canals were as wonderful and peaceful as ever, and the wildflowers – those that have escaped the fanatical dedication to mowing the Canal and River Trust seems to have – are looking fabulous.

As was the Gas Street black cat, disturbed from it’s slumbers by our happy chatter.

Summer is all about rides like this.

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#365daysofbiking Make a wish

July 10th – By the cycleway in Telford, I found this lovely seed head. It takes a jolly good breath to blow the seeds off these!

Not a dandelion – far too large, at least a couple of inches in diameter, with big, stout wind-borne seeds. The plant itself was a good couple of feet tall.

Following enquiries on social media it turns out to be salsify, or goat’s beard, a plant once prized for it’s edible root.

I can’t say i’ve ever noticed the flowers, though. I must look harder now I know what to spot.

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#365daysofbiking Little pink mystery

July 4th – I have no idea what this actually is but it’s rather gorgeous. Spotted on the cycle way to Telford Station, it’s tiny and pink, and could possibly be sticky flax but I’m really not sure.

Whatever it is it’s gorgeous and rather special.

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#365daysofbiking By any other name

May 22nd – One of the joys of late spring and well into summer are the various varieties and colours of wild roses that populate wastelands, hedgerows, thickets and any edgeland that’s relatively sun-blessed and open.

In Telford on the way to a client meeting, the cycleway from the station to Hortonwood is lined with splashes of pink – from pale, almost white to deep, deep almost purple. And without exception, they smell divine.

Unlike cultivated roses in parks and gardens, these wayside stars get little or no care and just do their own, dishevelled thing – and to me that’s far more beautiful than some preened and nurtured hybrid.

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#365daysofbiking Only sleeping

May 1st – Horses are curious beasts. Just off the McLean Way at Goscote, home to many a tethered horse, I saw this one fast asleep on it’s side.

Horses often sleep lying on their sides like this, and it’s perfectly normal – however, it’s something that unless you’re around the animals a fair bit, you don’t realise. Sometimes people not knowing think the animal has died. In the vast majority of instances, it’s just a horse, sleeping, like this one.

Lying there, I watched it for a while, until it grunted in it’s slumber and farted loudly. Bless it.

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#365daysofbiking Fluffed up

May 1st – On the McLean Way early in the morning for a change (the old South Staffordshire Railway route from Brownhills to Walsall) I noted at Ryders Hayes that the sallow seeds were ripe and drifting on the breeze coating everything with fine white downy fluff.

Sallow isn’t the only member of the willow family to do this, nor is it the only species of tree, but it’s always fun to see, if a bit challenging to the airways to cycle through!

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#365daysofbiking Another early arrival

March 28th – Also early this year along with most other stuff are the pieris flowers and bright read leaf tips.

This gorgeous ornamental shrub – sometimes called fetterbush – is grown a lot in gardens and in beds on industrial estates and parks for no other reason than well, it’s stunning.

This example was spotted in an otherwise anonymous scrub beside the cycleway near the Euston Way pub in Telford.

This is pretty much a fortnight earlier than it was last year, when I spotted the same shrub in Wednesbury.

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