Tag: IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Welcome snowflakes

April 4th – A break in the rain, and I made a dash for it, mostly avoiding getting too wet, but oh my goodness it was cold.

Not cold enough for snow, though.

Warm enough for spring snowflakes, as I found this clump growing and flowering beautifully at Sandhills. Gorgeous white flowers with delicate green tipped petals, snowflakes look a lot like snowdrops, but are bigger and bushier and flower later.

A real treat on an awful day.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2FUuUot
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Waiting it out

April 4th – Returning from Birmingham, into a downpour that was totally expected at Shenstone. An hour I waited in the cold just for a cessation in the rain, as there was a headwind and I had no waterproof trousers.

At least I got some work done. Thanks to the mobile internet…

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2UmK2oz
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Currant affairs

April 3rd – Too rushed to take many photos today, but pulled up short by a flash of cerise in the Clayhanger hedgerow – blackcurrant blossom. Always beautiful, mostly overlooked.

On a grim, cold and windy day a real fillip.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2FV5R4E
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Familiar hoodlums

April 2nd – Since it’s spring, I note that the aggressively begging Canada geese are back on the canal near Clayhanger Bridge. Although they’d both clearly been grazing the freshly mown grass on the towpath, they were both hungry and refused to let me pass until I gave them a treat.

Curiously, this seems to be their permanent state, no matter how much food they have…

Fortunately, I’ve been anticipating their reappearance and had some seed in my pocket ready for these shameless muggers.

I’m glad to see some traditions holding steady.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2Ve31OP
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Thank you Gordon

April 2nd – One of the delights of Walsall Borough in springtime is the huge amount of daffodils on verges, in parks and other open spaces, like here on the corner of Four Crosses and Lichfield roads in Sheffield.

They are a credit to Gordon Kinnair at the council, sadly no longer with us, who was responsible for their planting.

This post is dedicated to both Gordon and his good friend Kate Goodall.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2TQEXzR
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Beaming

April 1st – It’s the 8th birthday of this blog today – on April 1st, 2011 I started by joining the #30daysofbiking project egged on by Renee Van Bar, top cyclist, pal and Dutchperson. I enjoyed it so much, the only thing that ever stopped me riding was a very bad case of food poisoning at New Year 2012. Apart from those lost 2 days, I’ve cycled every day since then.

That’s cycling for 2,920 days out of the last 2,922.

I’m quite pleased with that. When I tell the #30daysofbiking people about this they always treat me like some kind of oddity.

Every day I get on my bike and ride somewhere, and take you readers along with me. Thanks for joining me and sharing my journeys, be they work, errands or pleasure.

And what better time to mark this achievement than to note the fresh white beam leaves of a new year? Gorgeous in their ridged perfection, they are beautiful and I was pleased to see them near Clayhanger Common.

Cone on then, grab your coat – I’m up for another year of this. Are you? Hop on.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2V8Lwz3
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Letting the light back in

March 31st – Well, here in the UK is the start of British Summer Time, for me the real start of spring.

I hate the clocks going back in autumn and the self-imposed hour advance in darkness. It’s a silly, pointless habit we started decades hence and have never had the balls to stop.

As I crossed the M6 Toll motorway near Hammerwich at well past 7pm, the sun was setting dramatically behind the forest of streetlights and made a movie scene of the traffic upon it.

I’m so pleased to have the light back in my life.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2Va7py7
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Graceful

March 31st – Up to Chasewater on an evening ride. I’d been resting and didn’t feel like going far – particularly as it was bitterly cold, even in the sporadic sun patches.

I noticed this small heard of 5 deer on the opposite side of the canal from Anglesey Wharf, where they’d been recorded swimming a few days previously. These deer love water, or so it would seem.

They were quite tolerant of my company, unusually enough, and even walked towards me, the better I guess to check me out for maybe a treat or two (Sorry ladies I had nothing).

Catching them jumping forward and back over the fence was a real treat. For such large animals they are so very graceful.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2YNtNzI
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Slippery customer

March 30th – Spotted on a recently cropped tree stump near the canal by Birchills locks, some impressively horrid-looking slime mould fungus that looks for all the world that it might spring to life and try to take the country by force at any minute.I’ve not seen any of this stuff for years. It was clearly living off the tree sap and the general moisture on the stump.

Stomach-churning and fascinating at the same time.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2FELWqB
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Haunted

March 30th – I had to nip to Walsall at noon. I was tired from a very demanding week, but the weather was nice and the riding surprisingly easy.

I don’t mind Walsall these days – I long ago resolved my conflict with my memories and learned to embrace the place anew. It’s never been a bad town. It’s just that many who live here hate it because it isn’t the same as when they were young.

Of course it isn’t – all places change, and what folk resent is not the change in the town, but the change in themselves, I find.

I pushed my bike up Church Hill and admired the view, I plodded around the town below aimlessly but enjoying it immensely. I stopped for coffee in the sun. Then out on the canal to call at Sainsburys in Reedswood, where I noticed the last (nearly) whole remnant of Reedswood Power Station – the old pedestrian bridge over the long gone railway, now orphaned and fenced out of use between a pub and and the retail park.

Walsall is haunted by it’s own past, let alone the half-imagined one it has projected upon it.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2UtkdCR
via IFTTT