Tag: shenstone

April 25th – April is certainly the cruellest month of 2012 so far. Maybe I just got used to life in the dry, but commuting this week has had it’s difficult moments. I headed to Lichfield at dawn in a rainstorm, wrenching myself up the A461 against a merciless headwind. Making the train just in time, the inclement weather seemed to follow me to Leicester, where it hung around menacingly outside, like some school bully waiting to beat me anew on the way home. Fortunately, the trip home wasn’t so bad, just drizzle, really. But whatI did notice was the trees: clearly thirsty, there has been a sudden explosion in foliage and blossom. It’s an ill wind, and all that. 

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 12th – I don’t know much about the Little Holms in Shenstone. This secluded, rather pretty public open space runs from the railway bridge by the Pumphouse along the banks of the Footherley Brook. It’s been there as long as I can remember, and is delightful at any time of year. A great spot for quiet contemplation. It’s also a great place to appreciate the bridge and it’s architecture. 

April 11th – This makes me angry. Very angry indeed. This small bungalow – the lodge to Owletts Hall Farm, in Lynn, on the road between Shenstone and Stonnall, is another long-empty property being left to collapse by its selfish owners. This wrecked, derelict house – like Keepers Cottage and the abandoned terraces in Footherley – could make someone a lovely little home. But for some reason, the owner would rather see the building carried to dust. I’ve known this building to be empty for over thirty years. There ought to be a law against this. 

April 5th – It was a long short week in Telford. Work has been heavy going the last couple of weeks, and I’m glad that today was my last working day of the week. Again returning from Shenstone for the tailwind, the day was gorgeous when I emerged from the train at about 6pm. I opted for the back lanes through Footherley in order to catch the evening sun, which after the snow of yesterday, was warm on my back. The lanes looked beautiful, and I stopped on the hump bridge one the Footherley Brook to study the inscriptions. Generations have carved their marks in the soft sandstone capstones, the oldest I think being the inscription from D Rushbrook, apparently from 1931. I’ve searched locally for the name to no avail, and I often wondered what became of him, or if Billy and Trace, who declared their love in stone on the 20th April 1983 are still an item, 29 years later. I do hope so.

April 5th – There seems to be an awful lot of early-flowering oilseedrape about at the moment. The normal varieties seen in the fields around Shenstone, Stonnall and the outskirts of Brownhills flower around mid-May, but I’ve noticed in the last twelve months late and early strains, like this field near Footherly. It’s a gorgeous plant, I love the colour, the scent and the the bug life it attracts. This oil-rich brassica (that’s right: it’s a member of the cabbage family) must earn a lot for farmers, and seems to be quick and easy to grow. It often receives a bad press, with people blaming the plant for hayfever outbreaks, yet it’s pollen – evolved for insect and contact rather than wind pollination – is far too heavy and sticky to be wind borne.

April 3rd – Today was about the sky. What it threatened, what it was. What it held back. It was distinctly wintry after recent days, and as I arrived at Shenstone I noticed the old tower visible on the skyline next to the pronounced gargoyles of the new church. Feeling spots of rain on my head on platform 4c at New Street, I looked up. The sky was still being threatening. When I left work and arrived at Telford station, it was wet, miserable and grey. I had a long way to go tonight, and it didn’t look like the commuting gods were on my side. 

Actually, it seemed I was wrong. 

March 31st – this chicken shed/barn stands in Raikes Lane, Between Lynn, Shenstone and Chesterfield. I only noticed it recently. Over the road there’s a large, modern chicken farm, and I suspect this to be it’s antecedent. I think it’s one of the oldest such steel sheet structures I’ve ever seen, and wonder how old it actually is. The frame seems to be timber and girder, and I don’t think the roof is original. The bolts holding the sheeting on look very old, as do the window frames. A curiosity buried in the backlanes.

March 30th – As I came back up over Aldershawe that afternoon I was exhausted. The week had been emotionally, physically and mentally enervating, and I felt flat, tired and weak. There had been a chord-change in the weather, too; it was chillier, a little overcast and there was a real bastard of a headwind. It probably wasn’t that fierce, but on top of everything, it just felt like another battle I didn’t need. At Cranebrook Lane, not far from Muckley Corner, I stopped for a snack and a drink, and remembered this sad little stub of a road. Before the great folly of the M6 toll, this used to be Bullmoor Lane; to save building another bridge, the road engineers instead diverted the sleepy back lane southwest, to meet Cranebrook Lane on the south side of it’s own flyover. I loved the bit of Bullmoor lane that was lost; it was a little hilly, had a good view to Shenstone, and I spent hours exploring here as a lad. When they cut it off, a piece of me, just a tiny bit, died. The lost lane is now just a gated farm track. 35 years ago, you may well have found an exhausted lad here. He’d dig for sweets or an apple in his saddlebag on his well-loved Peugeot bike, before heading off into the wind like I was about to. It seems as distant now as my first day at school. The watering eye must have been the wind.