October 19th – Originally featuring tennis courts, gardens and bowling greens, the original, once beautiful Oak Park has been pretty much abandoned and allowed to decay in recent years. This is a crime, and a civic insult to the miners and citizens of Walsall Wood to whom this place was a gift. Only the bowling… Read More #365daysofbiking Garden ruin
October 19th – Nipping over to Walsall Wood on an errand, I crossed the sadly fading old Oak Park – not the leisure centre of the same name, but the formerly ornamental park that gave the centres their name. Near a bench by the old waterlogged bowling green, an amazingly vivid colony of what I… Read More #365daysofbiking Stumped
August 4th – A lane I’d not really ever registered the existence of disappeared a while ago, without me being aware. This is unusual, as I’m normally fascinated by these things. School Lane, Little Wyrley was a quiet, winding, lightly used lane with no dwellings between the A5 Watling Street and Gorsey Lane. This whole… Read More #365daysofbiking Lost lanes
July 26th – All hell broke loose in the afternoon. I had to travel out to investigate an unexpected job. I returned at near enough 11pm by train to Bloxwich. The night was warm, and the train and station quiet. I prepared the bike and looked down the line. I was tired, no, worse than… Read More #365daysofbiking Late night feelings
May 5th – Still suffering, but a cold, grey ride up through Weeford, Whittington and Croxall to keep moving. Passing Shenstone Church on the way, something was missing. I had an attachment to that old Yew: shelter in rain when I was a child, shady in summer and totally imperious, I’m sure it was felled… Read More #365daysofbiking It must be yew
March 17th – On Lea Lane, between Newton and Admaston, a nice country house. Rambling, large, with half its garden oddly over the road, it’s a curious building. What casual passers-by don’t realise in many cases is that this house, up until very, very recently, was actually a pub called The Wicket. In the middle of nowhere,… Read More #365daysofbiking A lifetime away
#365daysofbiking Here I stand: November 6th – One thing I forgot in the years I hadn’t been coming to Redditch is a small rule that also applies to fellow new town Telford – never risk an unknown shortcut when in a hurry. I was dashing for the train. I took what I thought would be… Read More
#365daysofbiking Dead and buried: September 16th – A grim, drizzly afternoon and a late escape. I went to see if there were any remnants of an ancient burial mound called Offlow near the hamlet of Swinfen, trapped in the A38-A5 interchange triangle, just south of Lichfield. Apart from a rise in the general landscape, there… Read More
June 21st – I passed through Snow Hill Station mid afternoon, and noticed a little bit of lost local history that I’d totally forgotten about – the old Snow Hill tram stop. When the Midland Metro opened in the late 90s, it originally terminated here at one platform of Snow Hill Station. The stop was… Read More
May 20th – Another late afternoon ride on a bad stomach – but this time, an absolute blast. Out mid afternoon through Wall, Whittington, Harlaston, Clifton, Overseal, Woodville, Hartshorne, Foremark Reservior, then back via Bretby, Swadlincote, Burton and Catton. The derelict cooling towers still loom over the remarkable Willington landscape, including the fascinating undulations in… Read More
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 