silly – Page 2 – BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking

#365daysofbiking – You shall not pass!

April 26th – Second attempt to sort the noisy bottom bracket appears to have worked. It’s true what they say, you’re never alone with a square taper chainset…

On a test run, I encountered this female mallard. Not a happy bird, it had settled on Coopers Bridge and was defying me to pass.

Unusual for mallards, as whilst fearsomely vicious to other ducks, and occasionally their own clutches, they are generally affable to anything else.

There was a bit of a Mexican standoff. Then she clearly remembered she was a duck, and flapped and honked her way back to the water, leaving the confused cyclist wondering what that was all about…

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#365daysofbiking Water carry on

March 24th – As I get older and wiser I realise that mallard ducks are just loud, shouty idiots with very unpalatable mating habits.

Here on the canal at Walsall Wood on my way to work, two males were competitively battling each other to mate with a female.

They were fighting for some time and the noise and disruption was considerable. Interesting that a coot seemed to be refereeing.

We are now under some kind of lockdown – I can only got to work if I can’t from home, or if I am a ‘key worker’; I can have some exercise every day and got to the shops. Most everything else is restricted or banned.

Unless you’re a duck. Then any old shit goes.

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#365daysofbiking Approaching equity

March 14th – One of the nice but pointlessly geeky things about riding with a GPS bike computer is the ability to see sunrise and sunset times change every day.

That’s not so great when nights are closing in, but when they’re opening out, it’s lovely to watch; and one of the things that always makes me happy is the spring equinox.

The science of the equinox/equilux is basically beyond me but the equinox is when the length of day is equal to the length of night, and the difference between sunset and sunrise is 12 hours. I always find it intriguing that thins’t smack bang at 6pm and 6pm, which would be neat, but usually around 6:15.

Every year this gets me, and every year I’m as delighted and inspired by it.

Find out more about the science of the equinox here.

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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 A dark chicken

January 9th – One of the more comedic things about curating this journal and blog is that I comment a lot about a geographical local feature with a very amusing name – the Black Cock bridge. Named after the pub nearby, the Black Cock has long been the source of much schoolboy innuendo and humour, but is actually a decent, old fashioned pub that always looks welcoming when I pass, particularly on a dull winter evening.

It does, of course, have a far cruder colloquial name I shan’t detail.

However, I do love the thought of sweaty-palmed people banging Black Cock into search engines, which then return multiple hits to this journal rather than the desired subject…

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#365daysofbiking Further abroad

December 23rd – And on, from Ashbourne to Matlock, then Bakewell. Bakewell was a different proposition – night was falling, and there were early revellers around (including one in a rather fetching sprout suit)…

In Bakewell it was Christmas: Bitingly cold, with beautiful lights and a hushed air of determined shopping. The shops themselves were gorgeous.

Several hours were spent before returning for home. A great pre-Christmas trip.

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#365daysofbiking Ain’t that grand

December 19th – Grand Central has always been a piss-poor, cliched name for an overblown shopping mall.

But I do wonder if America is littered with similar malls called ‘Duddeston’, ‘Northfield’ and ‘Bangham Pit’?

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#365daysofbiking The Christmas list

December 12th – The Christmas tree in Walsall is usually very nicely done. After a few grim yers in the early 2000s when lighting contractors synthesised something akin to a tree from a lighting column to universal derision, then a year or two without, we now get a pretty decent tree in the square between the bus station, bank and the Crossing at St. Pauls.

This year’s tree is excellent – but following blustery weather, developed an unfortunate tilt. It’s now fixed, but still not quite plum.

I think it adds character.

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#365daysofbiking A tale of two trees

December 10th – Christmas trees in Walsall Borough have to be externally funded and the council won’t pay for them. In the district centres where they are present, someone has either usually been generous individually (like the three councillors who personally pay for Walsall Wood’s tree) or the public have come together to pay for them.

Setting an early example in the public subscription stakes has always been Rushall, whose community work hard every year to raise the money required to pay for a tree to be erected on the square outside the ‘Village Hub’ – the old library – and jolly festive it looks too.

Contrast that with the pitiful string of lights thrown on a random tree every year on the public open space in Shelfield, on the corner of Four Crosses Road and Lichfield Road.

I really don’t know why they bother there, I really don’t.

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