June 25th – Swans are inscrutable, they really are. On the Nine-Foot Pool at Chasewater, with the level still just about overflowing, a pair of birds sleep on the concrete spillway weir, seemingly oblivious to the natural plant detritus around them.
To me, the spot they doze in looks uncomfortable, chilly and precarious, but to them, it’s clearly just the right place to get some shut-eye.
Occasionally, I realise how much I don’t know about wildlife.
June 16th – Thanks to whoever tipped me off (I think it might have been Dave Fellows), but my complaint about the lack of handrails on the steps down from the canal to (the still closed) Bentley Mill Way on the Darlaston/Pleck border were, it seems, premature.
This week, a new rail has been installed – and jolly nice it looks too.
Have to say though, the steps – implicitly on a cycleway – are still awful to negotiate with a bike, but at least we have something to grab now.
It’s a shame the shallower, easier to negotiate access the other side has been removed…
June 6th – Well, we had the large cocks last week, and now I found a pair of balls.
There I was, cycling up the Mellish Road (some way from the golf club and driving range) in the early morning, having picked up some components from Aldridge, when I spy an egg in the road.
It wasn’t an egg, it was a golf ball. A little further on, uphill, I found another.
A curious find.
June 2nd – Can the concept of ghost signs be applied to commercial vehicles, do you think?
For those that don’t know, ghost signs are the defunct, redundant or barely legible remains of signs on buildings advertising long gone places of companies, and spotting them is quite a thing in some circles. I’ve been passing this red box van in Shelfield for months and wondering.
The legend on it once said ‘Another bun run from: Riverside Bakery – Tel Middlesbro’ 247181 – Tel N’Castle0191 271 4874′ – but it’s since been removed, and only the non-faded shadow of the text remains.
Interestingly (or perhaps not) the bakery seemed to make the news for all the wrong reasons in 2006, but I think it still might exist.
The trivialities I notice when cycling really do trouble me sometimes…
May 30th – I encountered the Watermead swan family right by the Watermead estate itself – and the cygnets, still at a remarkable 9, are growing well.
Mum and dad are clearly teaching their offspring well, as this young bird is already proficient in hand signals.
May 29th – In the meadow behind Alder Mill, just north of Atherstone, this pair of huge black cocks.
I have no idea, but just like imagining the faces of hopeful Googlers finding this post at some point in the future and being somewhat disappointed.
Interestingly, these cocks are only a a few hundred yards from a place called King Dick’s Hole.
Think I’m joking? Check a map.
May 27th – I had stuff to do near Allcester, and finished early, so rode over to the canal at Browmsgrove and rode home all the way on the canals, through Birmingham. A great, though tiring ride, the canal was as fascinating and quirky as ever.
I loved the giant Lego in Aston, and was mindful of the slow men in the water. The boater dogs were charming, and I’d forgotten Brittania in inner-city Brum.
A great ride.
May 24 – On the cycleway between Walsall and Pelsall, the former rail line crossed Fordbrook Lane in Pelsall. Even when this was a rail bridge, it suffered problems with vandals dropping rocks onto the cars below; finally, Sustrans – the charity that maintain the cycleway – have erected a fence to alleviate the problem.
It’s a complex structure, and I wonder how effective it’ll be. But seeing some of the other odd things they’ve got up to lately, nothing surprises me.
May 3rd – Some advertising wonk was paid to come up with this for the Halifax building society (or are they a bank these days?) – and it irritates me as these posters are all over the place – in this case on the Walsall Road in Darlaston.
Top Cat appears to be advertising mortgages. That’s right, Top Cat. That’s a cat, who lived in a dustbin and survived from the proceeds of theft and confidence trickery and really wouldn’t ever be considered for a mortgage, although he probably would be suited to a career in the City.
Although I suspect the bankers learned the coin-on-elastic trick from him…
April 24th – At Chasewater, life halts briefly while the four white domestic ducks from just up the canal at Newtown perform a brief Beatles Abbey Road tribute.
My eyes were a bit damp to tell the truth…
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