Tag: Darlaston

July 20th – Sad to see something seems to have happened to the building off Victoria Road in Darlaston that was once the town fore station – the roof appears to have collapsed.

I really don’t know what’s gone on, but the building seems to have been made fairly safe, but there’s extensive damage to the timbers, and the tiles have mostly been stripped.

Whilst this is a historically important building in Darlaston’s history, I’m a bit torn over the cost of repair – it will certainly cost a lost to sort out, for what is, effectively, an unused garage. But I do feell concerned for it’s future.

A sad sight. 

June 19th – Last week I noted in passing that we were between flowering phases in Kings Hill Park. No sooner did I say that, then blog came the grounds maintenance crew and replanted all the beds and planters.

And as usual, they look thoroughly gorgeous.

My compliments to the people who work so hard here. You’re all stars.

July 17th – Later the same day, in Darlaston. A summer place.

This, my friends, is the heart of the Black Country: thought by people who don’t know it to be ugly, defiled, polluted and unlovely. 

It’s actually mostly the absolute opposite and that’s why it has such a large part of my heart and soul.

This is my place.

July 10th – Nice to see the rowan, or mountain ash berries ripening well, adding a welcome splash of orange to hedgerows, verges and thickets.

A useful berry, it can be used to make jam or wine, and birds love it.

Can’t help feeling a tinge of sadness hough that this new arrival signals a notch further towards late summer and the fruiting season.

July 5th – Returning, I came down the main road, and by the old people’s flats, a familiar grumpy, curled up ball, sleeping in the communal garden: it’s the old gummy cat I featured here a couple of weeks ago.

Always nice to see the old lad, and I particularly like his truculent, just-woken-up air here. Such a lovely old cat. I’m sure we share many common traits in our parallel dotages.

July 5th – I needed a break mid morning to have a think; so I slipped out of work on an errand and headed to Kings Hill Park, where I met this fellow.

This park has it’s share of cheeky grey squirrels, but this one was definitely posing for me. What a little star he is.

He didn’t help me with my train of thought, but he did provide some amusing light relief from it.

July 4th – Also out, but altogether busier was this juvenile heron. A lovely bird, clearly maturing and in very good condition, although still small for an adult.

This is a healthy, native heron fishing in a waterlily-swathed canal in the shadow of a huge scrapyard in the heart of the industrial Black Country.

Tell me this place isn’t wonderful and surprising. I dare you.

July 3rd – Also on the towpath near Darlaston, the poppies are beautiful at the moment, too. Another kind of urban pioneer, these too will grow just about anywhere, be it in a wayside patch or a fissure in some brickwork.

Riding urban backwaters at the moment – be they canals, tracks or inner city streets – is a real riot of natural colour.

July 3rd – It’s time for my annual heart-wrenching over the purple conundrum that is the butterfly bush. Buddleia is a prolific, very common shrub that will grow anywhere, in any scrap of earth or soot, and is synonymous with urban decay: look upwards in any town right now and you’ll see this tenacious battler growing and flowering from cracks in brickwork, lifting tiles on roofs, blocking gutters, prizing apart chimneys and crowding any embankment, towpath, disused rail line or wasteground.

It’s beautiful and very good not just for Lepidoptera, but all manner of bugs and is very, very pretty. But it is such a symbol of dereliction and decay.

June 21st – Another high summer day, the longest as it happens, and from here on in, the days shorten to darkness; but there’s plenty of summer left and it’s been glorious so far, so I’m not too sad.

On the Walsall Canal heading for Darlaston, life is busy hunting, blooming and multiplying, with herons hunting on the far bank, families of geese making their way through dense waterlily beds and flowers looking gorgeous in the hot sun.

A Walsall Top Lock, basking on a piece of drifting wood, I even saw a terrapin, about the size of a saucer. Sadly, it slipped away before I got the camera out but these poor creatures, often released into the wild when too large for captivity are becoming a common sight in canals and pools of the UK.

A great day to be on a bike in the place I love.