November 19th – Next morning, back to Telford in the early morning on a hard frost, as expected. Mill Green was as beautiful as it always is on such a morning: Icy, pale but mistily serene and peaceful.
It was a good morning for once and that looked like continuing. With the winter tyres on, I’m ready.
Come on then, let’s have it…
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November 18th – It was a cold, thankfully dry journey home. The roads were glistening with ice, and the main ones, a fresh scattering of road salt.
The first icy commute home of the winter is always hard. My hands and face were cold. It hurt.
Stopping at a shop in the way home, I noticed that the temperature was marginally still above zero degrees Celsius.
That was a shock. it felt much colder.
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November 18th – If you read this journal regularly, you’ll know I’m not terribly impressed with Telford’s new pedestrian bridge, linking the railway station with the town centre over the line and rTelford ring road.
The bridge itself is an awful design that relies on lifts for wheelchair access and those lifts are highly unreliable. The structure has no rainwater control, and seems like a badly thought out, peculiarly executed piece of civil engineering hubris.
However, I will say this: Like Walsall bus station, at night with the thing lit up, you can kind of see what the architect was getting at.
The lighting in the stairs handrails is a particularly nice touch.
But it’s still a turd you can’t really. polish.
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November 17th – The Canal and River Trust are still doing their best to piss me off, their talent for which is so prodigious I doubt they actually have to try.
After grumbling a couple of weeks ago at pointless towpath grass cutting up on the Anglesey Branch on the way to Chasewater, I see they’ve been up on the canal through Brownhills too.
They are cutting grass that the hungry waterfowl would have grazed overwinter. a colony of earthstar fungus has been destroyed. Grass mulch now is all over the paths, bunging up the bike and folk’s shoes. Parts of the grass that were formerly lush and verdant are now a cropped mud bath.
Why? Who the hell cuts grass in winter? This is sheer, pointless, piss-poor grounds management, and an utter waste of desperately needed cash.
Please stop!
A canal towpath is a wild place. That’s it’s charm – a rough cut twice a year would be more than enough.
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November 17th – Another rain sodden day. I know this is getting repetitive if you read these posts in series, but this is seriously what life here is like at the moment. It’s been so wet for weeks now that I’ve stopped grumbling at having to go out in it; it’s just a sort of a new normal.
The state of this is weird.
Down in Brownhills on a shopping trip, a wander over to the canalised for a loop over to Walsall Wood. The birds here – gulls, mallards, swans, geese and more – didn’t seem as tired of the rain as me, but they did seem a bit fractious. Maybe they were missing human feeding, which on a normal Sunday would be almost constant here.
I notice the goose with the white feathers on it’s head is still around. It’ll be interesting to track it over the winter, and see if it mates or if the colour discrepancy renders it an outsider…
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November 16th – Getting home, I looked at the GPS and noticed sunset – which I hadn’t really been tracking this year at all over much – was now at 4:14pm. I think it tends to peak at about 3:50pm, so I guess we have a further 25 minute slide before things inexorably start to improve – and that’s only just over a month away.
Bring it on!
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November 16th – Another wet and grey day, another errand: I had to pop over to Shenstone and then to Lichfield at teatime. The wind was hell coming home and the rain sporadic. It wasn’t;t a great ride if I’m honest.
Coming back up the A461 to Shire Oak over the Summerhill motorway bridge, since there was a break in the rain, I tried a long exposure with the G5X. Interesting result, but I needed more traffic – unlikely at this time on a Saturday, to be honest.
With the wind against me, rain starting and no fuel in my tank (I’d forgotten to eat during the day) the ride uphill was not nice.
Still, it was nice to get home.
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November 15th – The bikes are suffering in the bad weather.
A continual spray of road water containing grit, balsam, leaf litter and road salt is getting into the brakes, frame and drivetrain. The pads and brake discs are wearing fast.
I need to get on with some TLC and show my steeds some love.
But while the bad weather persists, anything other than essential work seems like a losing battle.
It’s not just the rider that needs some dry weather….
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November 15th – It had, at least, stopped raining. I arrived in Brownhills to overcast skies but thankfully, for once, dry.
I stopped to re-tie my lace at Ravens Court, the derelict, abandoned shopping precinct in the middle of Brownhills.
Beyond me in the heart of darkness there are no longer any shops in the place, and it sits, gently decaying, unloved and beyond the reach of anyone who cares to sort it out.
One day it will be gone, and this sad place will no longer be a focus for that which ails our town. But until then, it makes for a very eerie night image.
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November 14th – Labouring up Shire Oak Hill from Shenstone in constant rain, I began to wonder if by the end of the winter I’d develop webbed feet.
It seems to have done nothing but rain for weeks. I’m itching for a long ride on dry lanes. The Chase and Chasewater are nothing but mud baths.
And we’re hurtling toward Christmas.
Hope things improve soon.
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