Tag: snow

March 10th – Catapulted back into winter, I set off to work off the excesses of the previous evening. It was a cold morning, with a biting east wind, and it was snowing well. I had somewhere to call in Burntwood, then I wanted to go for a decent spin. I noted on my way that although it was wintry, it looks like the swans who abandoned their clutch last year at Catshill are nesting again, in exactly the same spot. That nest is clearly being built up again – let’s hope there are cygnets this year.

Another returnee is Bob the narrowboat. Occupied by an artist painting watercolours, he was in the same spot for a short while last year, and was previously up at Longwood Junction, near Walsall. Sightings of Bob the Boat have been an in-joke on social media for a while, now. It’s good to see it back.

Chasewater itself was more like Prestatyn on a bad day. The water was choppy and there were few folk about. At the water margins, the breakdown of vegetation newly submerged was being accelerated by the waves, and making the periphery of the the reservoir frothy and soapy.

The level is now 4cm off full, and the water in the Nine-Foot Pool is now really close to overtopping the weir. Absolutely unbelievable, really, considering the lake was virtually empty this time last year.

Spring is getting ready to go; only the weather is holding it back. Let’s hope this is winter’s las breath…

February 13th – oops, I forgot my gorilla pod. Sadly, I only discovered this unfortunate fact in the dark, in Walsall Wood on my comment home. It was raining, and the air had suddenly become quite warm. My planned shots for the two sets of today were therefore lost, and I had to improvise. I don’t have steady hands, and the shake correction on the camera is vicious in it’s manipulation of images. These shots were all ⅛ or ¼ exposure, hand held. Quite pleased, really, although they are quite poor. Time was I couldn’t do 1/60 exposure without blurring the shot, so something is improving, I’m not sure what.

Walsall Wood itself looks great at night, and always has; the pubs and shopfronts cast a great light, and in the wet, the vehicle lights sparkled. Amazing that after so much change, and so much expansion, this place still retains a village atmosphere.

February 12th – After a protracted and tortuous journey to Telord to undertake a five minute task, I needed to be in Tyseley that afternoon. The snow remained, and it was really quite cold and grey. A succession of delayed trains, grim light and relentless chilliness darkened my mood all day, so much so that when the time came to go home, I was glad.

I’ve been away from Tyseley for just over a week. I’ve really missed it. Looking from the Wharfdale Road bridge, I liked the snow on the terrace roofs stretching out beyond the railway to Camp Hill, whilst down on the platform, the railway signals twinkled in the mist.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day.

February 11th – I was expecting quite a bit of snow, but we only really had a dusting. I was again in Telford, and the transport, mercifully, ran to time and I got to my destination without hassles. Telford looked great with it’s white jacket. Normally quite dismal, the urban scenery looked great today.

Funny how snow can bring the dullest landscapes to life.

February 5th – The cycleways of Telford were beautiful this morning. It was snowing, lightly, but the sun was out, and snow lingered in the shadier hollows and hushed my noisy wheels. Telford’s bike tracks are legendary, but not well signposted or even mapped. Now they’ve matured, they’re often very secluded, almost hidden. I could have ridden around here for hours. Just for the quiet, the air, and the light.

A diamond in the dust.

February 5th – By heck, it was nippy this morning. We’d had the merest icing sugar dusting of snow, but after the almost humid warmth of the preceding period, the cold was a shock, as was the ice on the roads, particularly Wallheath Lane. I stomped and puffed into my hands as the sun rose at Shenstone Station; it caught the clouds beautifully and I reached for the camera.

Some things are worth getting cold for.

January 26 – I’d prayed to Thor, the god of meltwalter, but not much happened. We had heavy rain, then it refroze; but skipping out mid day for a sandwich and a brew, there was a sharp ramp-up in temperature, and the thaw set in with some urgency. It actually felt tropical.

I had to admire the British stoicism of the picnickers with flask and camera. They didn’t even have a dog.

Even the sailing club got their boats out.

The riding was terribly poor; the ice on the paths around Chasewater was unridable as it was too mobile; it was like riding on pea gravel.

The bird life is booming at Chasewater; we recently had the largest gull roost in many years, with upwards of 10,000 birds, and the waterfowl on the boating lake are as persistent as ever. I love the domestic white geese and the way they hector me for food.

The water level continues it’s inexorable rise; on January 11th, the water was at 75com from the top of the scale, it’s now 64cm, a rise of 11cm or just over 4 inches. With the huge increase in lake surface area, that’s a immense amount of water.

The 9-foot pool has now joined the main lake through the new bridge, and it won’t be long until the water overtops the weir into the spillway – that is, if it’s allowed to.

It’ll be interesting to see the effects of the thaw.

January 25th – This is one that’s been annoying me all week, but haven’t managed to catch well on video until Friday night at Rushall Square junction. As well as seeing moppets driving around peering out of a small aperture in an otherwise frosted up windscreen, the failure to clean snow from your roof is lazy and dangerous. Three times this week I’ve been overtaken by people – all three in Little Aston, as it happened – who, with the burst of speed – cleared snow of their roofs into me or my path. At 20MPH it’s not funny.

It’s also against the law. When it snows again, be a treasure and wipe the snow from your roof, eh?

January 24th – The thaw started today, just a little. Fragments of the day were almost spring-like, if one avoided the snow. The melting wasn’t dramatic, but it formed long, threatening Damacles daggers that hung ominously from gutters and eaves. By the time of the sunset, it was well below freezing once more. The sunset itself was beautiful and dramatic, and I caught it hurriedly, rushing for the train at Tyseley. Some times, it’s hard to beat a good, urban sundown.

I got to Brum about 4:45pm. And it was still light, more or less. We really are opening out now.

January 24th – For the second day running, there was chaos on the trains. Spotting it before I left home, I headed for Walsall, where there seemed to be more chance of actually finding a train going to brim. As it happened, I was lucky. I noted on the way that the roads were now so clear that it was allowing some people to drive like all-out morons again…

On getting to Brum, everything was out of sequence, and I ended up getting a train to Acocks Green., I like the area a lot, but my usual route through the suburb was very icy. The townhouses looked fantastic, however.