Tag: gone

#365daysofbiking Now clear and still

May 16th – The green aura continues along the canal, with only blossom puncturing the seamless, endless bright emerald green copses and hedgerows between Walsall Wood and Brownhills.

I’m glad to note, however, that one patch of green seems to be fading and dissipating – the algal bloom that’s been present on the Brownhills canal for months.

It was perfectly natural, and is totally organic in nature – but it did look ugly, I must say. Now dying back, today Catshill Junction was fairly clear and millpond still – whereas for the past weeks it’s been like a bright green, unpleasant soup.

Nice to see clear water again.

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February 4th – Out for a good ride to Middleton and Tamworth on a sunny, bright but cold afternoon. I shot through Footherley against the wind, but as I came through the hamlet itself, I stopped and did a double take.

The old terraced cottages here – which had been derelict as long as I’ve been cycling these lanes, so near enough 40 years at least – have finally been demolished, and nothing now remains.

I’m not really sad for their loss – they were unremarkable in themselves historically and architecturally – but they were a landmark, and I’ll miss the marker they provided.

I wonder – can Keepers Cottage, the house similarly derelict near the brook, back towards Lower Stonnall – be long for the world? I think not.

May 17th – I think this is a first for 365 days of biking. This is a photo of something that is no longer here.

This is a cellphone mast, located just off the A38 at Efflinch, near Barton under Needwood. Up until recently, there was a another transmission mast here with a very specific function: it broadcast a non-directional radio beacon for aircraft. The transmission was continual, incessant and could be picked up locally at the very end of the longwave band on a normal transistor radio; it broadcast the morse tones for the letters ‘LIC’ (for Lichfield) continuously in a mysterious, musical tone. I was transfixed by it as a kid, because I had no idea what it was.

If anyone back then had shown me a numbers station, my wee head would have exploded.

The station stopped transmitting in 2010 when the beacon was decommissioned, but I think the mast has only recently gone – I used to watch for it coming home along the A38. Cycling this way, often at dusk, I knew that from here, I was only an hour away from home.

When the relentless, inscrutable morse died, so did a tiny bit of my childhood.

Find out about the end of the LIC NDB beacon here.