Tag: Millfield

#365daysofbiking Softening

April 21st – The evening exercise rides are getting a bit samey and I think I need to vary my palette a wee bit – but it’s quite hard with beauty like this not five minutes out of town.

I took a spin up to Ogley Junction from Brownhills: Just a short, lazy loop from Silver Street. The canal and fields near home farm looked spendid in the warm, softening evening sun.

Machinery is once more on the half-ploughed field, which is interesting, and the oilseed rape is now in full bloom, too.

I never, ever tire of this place. It’s so gorgeous.

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#365daysofbiking Stuck in the mud

February 15th – Another weekend, another storm, this time the more mundanely named Dennis.

Dennis was a sod though, bringing heavy rain and high wind.

Slipping out on a foul afternoon to get shopping I hit the saturated towpath to Burntwood. An attempt to plough has been made at Home Farm, Sandhills and seemingly abandoned due to muddiness.

The wind howled and rain sang on the surface of the water.

The only bright spot was the Millfield Commemorative Stones – over 130 of them – that had been driven over by a Canal and River Trust contractor – have been lovingly recovered, washed and placed back in position by local man Micheal Newton Turner, who saw my blog post on the matter.

I sent him an Amazon voucher to thank him for his hard, selfless work.

Brightness in unexpected places is always a joy.

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#365daysofbiking Mill stones

December 25th – Happy Christmas!

A traditional Christmas Day bike ride, but only as far as Chasewater sadly and I noticed something I’d not spotted before: The memorial stones along the canal at Millfield near Home Farm at Sandhills, and the fact that the school on the other side have adopted the stretch of canal from Ogley Junction to Anchor Bridge.

This means they’ll tend it and I guess litter pick it and undertake lovely little projects like the individually painted memorial stones, I guess.

Great stuff.

I do wish the school wouldn’t use a windmill for a logo, though. The Mill field the school was built upon was originally that of a steam mill, now flats, pretty much next door to the school. It was a state of the art temple to Victorian mechanisation.

Never mind…

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June 19th – I note that the long expected narrowboat rebuilt for Millfield School in Brownhills – the Tucana – has finally arrived at Millfield school, looking rather splendid.

The mooring jetty has been here and largely unused for a few years, and rumours of the boat have ebbed and flowed, but it’s finally here and presumably now, schoolchildren will be using it, which will be great – after all, canals, canal freight and boats are a large part of local history.

I note the boat is now part of a partnership involving Shire Oak School too – I love the logos.

It’s a lovely thing indeed, but I do wonder at the cost…

March 8th – The year marches on, and so do the seasons. Slipping out into steady rain at lunchtime, I noted the Catshill swan couple seem to be returning to the old nest. One (probably the male) was loafing near the reeds, and the other was carefully weaving and packing torn fronds of rushes into a nest.

This seems way too early to me – but hen, they know what they’re doing, I guess. Wonder if they’ll top last year’s total of 8 cygnets?

July 4th – People will tell you Brownhills is ugly, dirty, post industrial, a hellhole. It is variously none, all, and some of these things. But like the rest of north and central Walsall, it has one surprising trait that is often unseen until pointed out: it’s very, very green. Looking over a field of young wheat at Sandhills, over the canal and Millfield Estate at Catshill, there’s the spire of St. James’s Church, right there, nestling in the trees. Between the rooftops are more shades of green than you’d find in a pantone swatch book. It’s the same if you get up on Church Hill in Walsall. The most urban bits are host to the most remarkable trees, yet the seem to go largely unnoticed.

In case you’re wondering, last year this field held spuds. Crop rotation in action, there…