May 12th – Whilst taking my call and being glared at by the local wildlife, something else caught my eye at the canoe club on Silver Street. Tethered out of harm’s way is a mobile work raft. I can’t be certain, but Brian Stringer mentioned that the exterior of the Pier Street Bridge was to be cleaned for the canal festival, and I think that’s probably what the platform raft is for.
They’re a common sight where bridge maintenance work is going on.
April 20th – For an evening spin, it was pleasant enough; the wind was grim, but at least I’d fixed the problem with my gears. At Chasewater, the sunset was nice, but unremarkable, and I was surprised at how tiny the gull roos was. I could hear an owl calling near the dame, but I couldn’t see it. On the way back home, the sky darkened, and it looked very, very black over Bill’s mother’s.
Luckily, I just got home and got the bike in as the heavens opened… I do hope that nice spell wasn’t summer.
October 12th – It’s quite hard to take photos on such a rainy day. You find all the good pictures are facing the rainfall, and because the light is poor, you need long exposures, usually resulting in the lens gathering raindrops. I stopped on the Pier Street Bridge to check out the golden streetlight on the canal surface, and managed to keep the lens dry enough to capture the narrowboats in their moorings. Spinning round and interested in the combination of light, wet surface and steelwork, I didn’t realise I had gathered the raindrops. But they worked out quite well, really.
September 12th – The weather has taken an autumnal turn of late, although this morning it felt unseasonably warm. I took loads of pictures this morning of fungi, then discovered afterwards I’d had the camera set badly and they were all fuzzy and out of focus. On the way home, though, I noted the last flowers of the season still holding up well, and the surprise lupins at Clayhanger were a shock. The dog roses near Pier Street bridge have both wonderfully scented pink flowers and beautifully orange hips. There are still traces of summer in the wet hedgerows and scrubs.
This is an odd season, to be sure.
August 17th – In the way that sometimes things just happen in Brownhills without notice, rhyme or reason, a bench has appeared at the top of Pier Street in Brownhills. There is no logic to the positioning, and indeed, it’s quite awkward. Nobody would want to sit here, facing the side of a shop.
The bench is tatty and has clearly been transplanted from elsewhere. But where? And why? By whom? What on earth were they thinking?
July 20th – Out all day, and back home late I slipped out for a takeaway. Circling Brownhills in the dark, I had a play with the settings on the camera. Tilt-shift long exposure at night is an interesting effect – not sure it worked too well, but I think it bears further exploration.
In the summer, it’s a surprise to remember how dramatic even the most mundane bits of Brownhills can be at night.
June 20th – A wet afternoon. I came back from work and headed to Brownhills for some shopping. Crossing the Pier Street bridge, Brownhills looked oddly sad, yet beautiful in the drizzle. The bunting was up for the canal festival, and with everything green it was hard not to be cheered a little by the optimism of it.
Come right on in, summer. we’ve reserved your seat…
January 26th – Had a wry laugh at this one. Noticed yesterday that the sign was still up trumpeting the new Pier Street footbridge, over the canal in central Brownhills. The bridge is a fine thing indeed, linking as it does Clayhanger and Brownhills in style, replacing a steep-stepped footbridge that was awful, frankly.
I was unaware of Walsall Council’s ‘Drive to regenerate Brownhills District Centre’ – wonder how that’s going?
Would the last business to leave the town please switch the lights off and feed the deer? Cheers.
January 12th – I returned to Brownhills to pop to Tesco – never a great experience.
Heading back, I looked over the old market site, and up Pier Street to the High Street past the site of the old clinic. This land was once the site of a pub called The Pier, or Fortune of War; latterly, it hosted a busy market. Now, it sits derelict, set aside for a new Tesco development that never came. It has been empty, deserted and neglected for years now, and looks set to remain that way for a long time to come.
Local occasional blogger and Jack-the-lad Brownhills Barry recently speculated there were ghosts here. There are none. All that stalks here are the shadows of the past and it’s promises, and the darkness of lost horizons.
Sometimes, the tale you tell is lost in the one you left untold.
January 2nd – I rounded the bend towards Brownhills, and the overflow near the Pier Street Bridge caught my eye. Only a few days ago, this was a raging torrent, flooding the land behind, struggling to cope with the downpours that had constantly filled the canal. Tonight, it was quiet, a relative trickle. The land behind was still saturated, but draining, slowly. There was very little sound. I thought about it for a while. The transitory nature of the water, about beginnings, endings and direction.
You see, today, It was the end of 365daysofbiking. I started this odd mission on April 1st, 2011, after being cajoled into it by fellow cyclist Renee Van Baar, originally only for 30 days. I enjoyed those 30, and resolved to do a whole year, but last new year I was very ill indeed. I missed two days laid up, and returned to the bike on the 2nd of January 2012. So, the mission is now complete, but I have cycled all but two days out of 21 months.
I’m quite proud of that, but more later. Is this where the story ends?
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 