Tag: sandhills

April 25th – Everywhere you look, nature is getting it on. Trees are bursting into flower and leaf, and spring blooms punctuate the hedgerows and verges. Dripping with life, nature is really going for it now, the greens almost fluorescent in their intensity. The Horse Chestnut trees were barely alive a few days ago, now they are adorned with soft, fresh foliage and sharp stabs of blossom. Cherry and apple blossom dust gardens with pink and white. Lets hope the weather dries out a little and the bees can get to work.

April 24 – the poor weather continued. As I came home on the train we passed through a shower to the south, and I alighted at Shenstone to dry roads and darkening skies. I’d forgotten my waterproof trousers, and this didn’t look good. Conditions became increasingly threatening, and the rain started at Lynn. By the time I’d got to Sandhills, the rain was torrential and I took cowardly refuge in the bus shelter, and watched the storm for 15 minutes. Eventually, bored and cold, I plucked up courage and cycled home. Very wet, very cold and somewhat cheesed off.

April 20th – Mashing up Shire Oak hill at Sandhills, my gaze was snagged by this interesting sight just through the copse at the side of Lane’s Farm fields: a fair quantity of beehives. I’ve never noticed these before. I do hope they’ll see some use this year. There aren’t nearly enough bees kept in this country, and with the twin perils of Veroa and Colony Collapse Disorder ravaging the bee population, they need all the help they can get. Without the bees, we’re stuffed. And I love honey…

April 18th – A river ran down the A461 Lichfield Road at Sandhills after a moderate shower. Out of all the storm gullies on the Walsall bound side of the hill, only 2 were flowing freely, all the others were blocked with silt. It seems that Tarmac – the contractors looking after the roads for Walsall Council – don’t like to bother cleaning drains. I’m 100% sure that the jobs are passed on, but in four years, I’ve never got a gully cleaned out. I give up, to be honest. Most of the storm drains on Shire Oak’s main roads are blocked.

April 5th – Spring is in full throw now. The trees are coming into leaf, early rapeseed is flowering and despite the cold wind, the sun was warm on my neck. Trundling back from the Chasewater Transport Show, I noted one of my favourite sights was coming into being – a weeping willow over water. Such a beautiful thing, and a real sign that better days are on the way. Home or Lanes Farm at Sandhills looked gorgeous with its patchwork of rolling fields. People who say Brownhills is ugly really need to get out more. 

April 12th – That’s what I love about spring – the firsts. First snowdrop, first daffodil. First yellowhammer. First house martin. Everything starts over in spring, and so it is with the bluebells. These are my first this year. Sadly, they’re the foreign interlopers rather than the English variety, but they’ll do (the English only have blooms on one side of the stem). They’re growing beside the busy A461 Lichfield Road at Sandhills, just near Brownhills. Now we’ve got bluebells, can my favourite, the wild garlic, be far behind?

April 4th – Today was not a photogenic day. My journey to the station at Telford – about three miles – was against the wind and in a steady rain, felt much how I imagine being shotblasted to feel. It was the kind of rain that made your forehead hurt.

At the other end of my commute, I chose my return station with care. I could have come from Walsall or Shenstone, but the latter offered the choice with the favourable wind. Positively blown home, there was nothing that inspired me to get the camera out until I tackled Shire Oak Hill at Sandhills. The weather had been dire, yet I was coasting up a really quite nasty hill without thinking. I reflected on the nature of this hill over history – this small group of old houses would have been the Sandhills of old, one being the Leopard pub – closed at the turn of the 1900’s, but with a two-century history. What would it have been like to climb this hill in say, 1850? 1800? 1750? 

An old route through an old hamlet. Never really noticed  before.

A commute from the 26th March, turned to video to go with an article on my main blog noting the first anniversary of this journal. Please read the original article by clicking here – and if the video above is blocked in your country, there’s an alternate version linked in the article. 

Here’s to more of the same… and another 365daysofbiking.

March 27th – Lane’s Farm at Sandhills is known by most folk in Brownhills. Actually an arrangement of several houses, Home Farm, Sandhills House and Lime Barn stand on the bend of an old private track that connects the Anchor Bridge and pub with the foot of Shire Oak Hill opposite the old Leopard pub. It’s very sad that this track is a private road, and indeed, no public rights of way that I’m aware of cross this land, an unusual thing. The track neatly skirts Shire Oak Hill, and the ability to traverse it would be a boon on the way home sometimes. From the Sandhills side, the track is a majestic avenue of mature trees, leading to a house with a Victorian, walled kitchen garden. There is a lot of history here.