365daysofbiking I am traffic:
October 8th – A snatched photo on the way home in the dark. This is a normal commute at the normal kind of time and I’ll have to get used to this now. Rushall Square is always kind of beautiful at night. Even when traffic free, it appears busy with traffic signals, street and shop light mingling.
These commutes are the hardest of all, the first in unusual darkness. But their urban beauty is hard to ignore.
Ah well, down the hatch…
365daysofbiking Ever falls the twilight:
October 6th – I returned to Brownhills in the overcast weather hinterland between night and what passed for day. It was damned grey and inside, I felt that way too. The onset of winter has me by the neck this year and I’m alternately OK with it and then quite down. I somehow feel I let summer slip away – I didn’t, I rode lots and saw lots and it just ended early, but I feel bereft.
From the Silver Street pedestrian bridge, I surveyed one of my classic winter views: Autumn is settling well here now, and the new houses with the nice line along the canal made an interesting match to the colour of the trees before them. There is life here now, lights in the new dwellings, and no longer does it feel desolate to stand here and be confronted with the place I love.
This town is changing, like the season; slowly, imperceptibly if you’re not attuned to it, and I think for the better. Finally, the ghosts of the civic failure here are being exorcised, and there is evidence of a little hope, a little life, a little warmth.
Unlike the season, Brownhills is opening up. Perhaps this grey twilight is better than I thought.
365daysofbiking Noble jacket:
October 5th – Darlaston is probably at it’s very best in autumn. An indisputably industrial, highly urbanised Black Country town with a huge amount of greenery, it wears the multi-coloured noble jacket of autumn beautifully.
In Victoria Park, looking towards the Mystic Bridge, autumn is just starting to paint the trees in shades of yellow, gold and orange.
The sadness of the summer’s loss is now passing, and I’m quite enjoying the change in the scenery.
#365daysofbiking Tree of life:
September 29th – Heading out at sunset after what was a pretty bad day, I swung up the canal through town, over Catshill Junction and over to Barracks Lane. The canal was beautiful and peaceful, and the only souls I saw were the waterfowl scudding around looking for food.
Looking over the fields to Home Farm my favourite tree – the horse chestnut on the skyline just by the farm buildings – is beautifully golden, and glowed in the evening.
All round me now, the greenery is packing up and going for autumn. There’s no ignoring it.
#365daysofbiking Going down:
September 26th – Crossing Cathshill Junction and heading up to Anchor Bridge, I caught it on the cusp of day and night, and realised that soon, I would be doing this once more in darkness.
I don’t know where summer went this year; it seems barely days since I was riding the roaches, eating ice-cream at Blithfield or riding in short sleeves around North Warwickshire.
Time passes so fast these days. It was a good summer – I doubt I’ll ever see one with such consistently fine weather again.
#365daysofbiking Sparser:
September 18th – The flowers are getting sparser now, and soon the only real blooms will be the gorse, and the odd winter stragglers. On the grass verge outside work, the birdsfoot trefoil – egg and bacon – is still going strong, and you can see well how it found its name: the seed heads look like bird’s feet.
#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 was nothing but a cellphone transmitter, but I expected that as history says that Offlow was lost over a century ago to farming.
I returned via Lichfield over the Bridleway over the A38 up past Harehurst Hill, near Wall. The main road – pretty much a motorway in all but name – has left a much larger impact on the land than Offlow ever did – which is a bit sad.
#365daysofbiking Still hanging on:
September 15th – Back on the canal in Brownhills on the way back home, the autumn was far more subtle. The hawthorn hedgerows are very, very crimson this year with hawthorn berries showing a particularly heavy harvest, and the reed beds, grass and waterside trees are still pretty green.
If I tried hard, I could just forget the oncoming season and still convince myself these were the end days of a great summer.
#365daysofbiking Tinges:
September 15th – Nipping top Shenstone and Aldridge on errands, I stopped on the railway bridge to survey the classic view over the rooftops of the village, to note that autumn was coming here now – and not just the accelerated leaf drop of the leaf-miner affected horse chestnuts, either – but tinges of red and brown in most of the trees.
Soon this will be a riot of colour, and then bare trees again to close out the year.
Where has 2018 gone?
#365daysofbiking Hello darkness my old friend
August 26th – it was a dreadful, wet day and I still wasn’t well. I was busy at home with things that had needed doing for ages, and I slipped out after dark for a spin around a dripping, sodden town.
I hate this weekend, every year; it’s OK if the weather’s good and you can ride, but if it’s grey and horrible it’s so depressing. It always feels like the end of summer, even if it’s nowhere near.
Riding was actually good, and the somnambulant town was quiet in the gathering night. With the new houses, Church Road is probably the most atmospheric it’s been for years, and Coppice lane wears it’s loneliness like an old jacket.
Still can’t get a night photo of Morris I’m happy with, though…
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 