Tag: rain

#365daysofbiking Eternally connected

March 13th – Friday came as a day that was decent to start, and then gifted rain in the afternoon. When I left work, the rain had cleared leaving a bright, sunlit evening on which to admire my beloved Twin Sisters, the two church spires of Church Hill in central Wednesbury.

I love to admire this view from Kings Hill Park. I love the hill, the space, the rooftops before the tree-lined ecclesiastical summit. I love to think of the hundred or more years these lovely buildings have watched over the industrial landscape and it’s changes below.

And I also wonder how many people like me have stood in this place and done exactly the same as me over the years. I love the way it’s all kind of eternally connected.

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#365daysofbiking Gimme shelter

March 11th – Going to work via a call in Aldridge on a wet day, I sheltered under Northywood Bridge near Stubbers Green.

It gave me an opportunity to study the boats in the yard nearby.

I noted the one closest to me – a handsome, large craft – was loaded with junk. Perhaps someone was clearing it out.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the halloween pumpkin was to ward off evil spirits deliberately, or was just where it happened to land…

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#365daysofbiking Gathering darkness

February 29th – Joy of joys it was raining again.

I returned to Brownhills via Catshill Junction in a darkening hour. The weather was getting to me, as was the lack of colour in my world.

I try to be, and stay a positive person at heart. I like to try to make this journal as positive about the places I got and things I see as possible. But of late, I seem to have done nothing but whinge about the weather.

But be in no doubt: Out there, right now, it’s pretty awful to be on two wheels.

These are some of the hardest weeks I’ve ever ridden, if I’m honest.

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#365daysofbiking Downtown lights

February 28th – Brownhills High Street. The rain was still perched upon my world as I came home, looking for a takeaway and some solace in the gloom.

A couple of minutes later I met an old pal, we dived into Costa for a coffee, and rolled the years back.

Brownhills isn’t nearly as depressed as it was; things are improving, slowly.

It almost looks beautiful in the rain. Or have I got meteorological Stockholm syndrome again?

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#365daysofbiking Here, there and everywhere


February 27th – The Peter Saville thing. It’s everywhere of late.

Later the same day. The rain didn’t stop, it doubled down and rained harder and more fiercely.

Stood, dripping, waiting for a late train at Telford, the rain shimmering on the glass of the new bridge, catching the lights. The angles and patterns of metalwork.

It felt brutal, if not actually truly Brutalist.

Find out more about why I’m in love with Peter Saville’s work here.

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#365daysofbiking Go with the flow

February 27th – The weather at the moment is almost continually foul.

Everywhere is saturated. The canal overflows are at full capacity, like here at Clayhanger; the towpaths are a long series of conjoined puddles. The roads are filthy, swamped and traffic bad tempered.

Every ride means carefully drying waterproofs and bags on arrival.

I’m used to it now. I don’t even frown when I see the rain.

But we must be due an end to it now, surely? Or at least a cessation in the merciless, continual wind please?

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#365daysofbiking The geometrid

February 26th – Another rainy, grim day. As I returned home from work mercifully early (and of course, sunset is getting later at a pace now) I turned to look back across the Pier street Canal Bridge.

Peter Saville’s designs keep cropping up in my everyday life.

I loved the curves and vanishing points of this.Never really noticed it before.

There’s always something new, even in the most familiar places.

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#365daysofbiking Think pink

February 24th -On Stafford Park, Telford after a thoroughly awful commute nature was doing it’s damnedest to cheer me up.

It actually succeeded. How stunning.

And the rain had stopped, too…

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#365daysofbiking This world of water

February 23rd – Chasewater Country Park is currently astoundingly wet. The reservoir has overtopped now and is sending a continuous deluge over the weir and down the spillway into the Crane Brook culvert.

The network of creeks and ditches across the heaths are all swamped, and pools and huge puddles are on every trail.

Even the old mine spring that normally trickles a red, rust-tinted flow of water through the marsh at the foot of the dam is flowing pure and clear through it’s gap in the trail concrete block that acts as a crossing.

This is going to take a very long, dry spell to restore to normal.

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#365daysofbiking Stuck in the mud

February 18th – One of the more grinding, miserable effects of the tremendously wet year so far has been the constant sea of mud that accompanies any off-road ride: From towpaths to cycleways, every journey is accompanied by damp and filth and the unpleasant, dogged drag through goop.

When things finally dry out a bit it will be so lovely.

But that feels a long way away right now.

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