BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking

On a bike, riding somewhere. Every day, rain or shine.

Posts tagged ‘lynn’

#365daysofbiking Season of the sunset

Sunday 6th February 2022 – Returning from Lichfield on an errand, I caught a good sunset – not a brightly coloured one, although those always occur this time of year sooner or later – but the sort of dramatic, moody, muted skyline that bristles with what Simon Jeffes might have termed surface tension.

The skeletal trees of Home Farm looked stark and beautiful on the skyline of Sandhills, as did the trees meeting the sky in a garden at Lynn.

Winter does have its compensations, but they can be few and far between if I’m honest.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/v6dHuOA
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Another grey Sunday

Sunday February 21st 2021 – For some reason we aren’t getting many bright, cold days this winter – but we are getting lots of dull, middling, anonymous, colourless days. Which is a shame, but at least it’s not continually wet like many recent winters have been.

There’s always a reason to be positive, after all…

On a test ride around Stonnall after some bike fettling, I stopped on Cartersfield Lane to make some adjustments and noticed there was a little brightness to the end of the day, albeit colourless: The sun was just retreating behind the woodland and electricity line up towards the quarry further up the hill.

On days like these, you take the beauty where you find it.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/38KqrUr
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking The golden hour

August 2nd – This week has been all about seasonal markers, and this evening as I left Shenstone for Stonnall and home, the harvest was well underway.

The fashion for huge, cylindrical baling seems to have ceased and we seem to be back to the more space efficient (and stable!) rectangular ones.

As ever, the machinery, synchronicity between drivers and sheer power of the operation is breathtakingly impressive, and a reminder that the countryside is still a huge, open air factory floor dedicated to our sustenance.

Always impressive to watch.

This journal is moving home. Find out more by clicking here.

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

#365daysofbiking Crossover point

 

February 11th – Riding back from Shenstone Station in the region of 6pm. Still just about light at Fighting Cocks.

this time next week it will be merely twilight here at this time.

On the darkening lane, the trees and farm buildings silhouetted agains the western sky, this was beautiful, but chilly. I loved the effect of the passing cars.

Slowly but surely the daylight’s winning the battle.

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

from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2temtP0

via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Golden:

October 18th – A lovely still evening, again with a beautiful sky it was a joy to cycle home in. At Stonnall, the last dying light over Sandhills was precious and suffused with gold.

I’d better make the most of it as the clocks go back in a week’s time, and that’ll end my sunset commutes for another year…

#365daysofbiking Skywiring:

October 4th – On my way home I had business in Shenstone, and as I returned through the tiny hamlet of Lynn, darkness was falling with the most stunning, dramatic sky.

I loved the way id highlighted the overhead electricity lines, which are something I consider beautiful and mysterious. These complex arrangements of poles, cable, metal structures and ceramic insulators are ignored by most, but are essential to our daily lives.

Few study them, and even fewer understand their layout, function and protective equipment. But that’s the whole point: The mystery in the complexity.

Meanwhile, while I was admiring the wiring, I was being watched, and never noticed.

July 30th – Working late at a remote site, I came back through Birmingham and Shenstone to hit the homeward commute just as a beautiful sunset unfolded across the landscape. 

One of the joys of late summer is it’s the season of the sunset, and it was a cracker. There were the earliest hints in the way the sinking, golden sun caught the thick, rolling clouds, and it ended in a banded crimson sky that made the homecoming skyline of Ogley Hay magical.

I’m so glad I caught this.

July 26th – The very hot weather seems to be coming to an end, timing almost perfectly with the end of the major session of the harvest. Locally now for a couple of weeks, the grumble and whine of fantastically large and complex harvesting machinery has been a continual backing track to rural life, and often I’ve ridden through clouds of wheat dust from this year’s crop being threshed in the harvester.

Not much spilled this year, which is interesting, the roads are usually thick with spilled grain, called ‘gleanings’ as traditionally workers and the poor were allowed to collect – glean – this harvest bounty and they’d feed it to their animals and fowl.

Interesting also to note the return of the rectangular bale. Well, they do stack better.

And with harvest and the end of the heatwave, the year gallops on…

March 28th – I’d been in Birmingham seeing a client and returned from Shenstone in a gap in the rain, down wet lanes, glistening and dripping in the odd light of a clearing sky.

The wind was against me and I was cold, but there was something captivating about the quiet and the sound of my tyres on the wet tarmac.

Winter seems endless this year. I just want to feel the sun on my face and the warmth to ride without a jacket a little.

Not too much to ask, is it?