Tag: South Staffordshire Railway

#365daysofbiking Beginning steps

January 12th – A better day to complete the errands I utterly failed at the day before.

I noted that on the Anglesey Branch Canal where it crosses the South Staffordshire Railway via an elegant Victorian cast iron trough aqueduct, contractors working for Back the Track had started to build a much needed and welcome stairway between the canal towpath and the cycle and walking route below – the McLean Way.

I’m glad I’m not building that. It looks like hard, precarious work. It also occurred that there’s no easy access to get the hardcore to the site, either.

My best wishes to the people building these steps, and thanks to the folk from Back the Track for dedicating so much time and effort to make things better for us all.

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#365daysofbiking Home signal

September 21st – A rough day. I’d been hoping to make it to the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Huddlesford Heritage Gathering, the biannual canal event near Lichfield, but had to work instead. It had been a nice day and Sunday, when I was free, promised to be awful. I was really low.

Arriving home late, I slipped out for a spin up the old rail line that used to run through Brownhills on it’s way from Walsall to Lichfield, now a lovely walking and cycling trail restored by volunteers and christened the McClean Way.

There’s now a bench been created looking out over Clayhanger Marsh by the restored signal post, and I took advantage of it to feel sorry for myself a little. But the view, the peace, the sight of foxes and herons soon cheered me up.

This is home, and a landscape I love and feel part of. I can’t be downhearted in it for long.

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#365daysofbiking Fluffed up

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May 1st – On the McLean Way early in the morning for a change (the old South Staffordshire Railway route from Brownhills to Walsall) I noted at Ryders Hayes that the sallow  seeds were ripe and drifting on the breeze coating everything with fine white downy fluff.

Sallow isn’t the only member of the willow family to do this, nor is it the only species of tree, but it’s always fun to see, if a bit challenging to the airways to cycle through!

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#365daysofbiking The trains don’t run here anymore:

September 7th – The weather was still grey and unpleasant, cold with a sharpening wind and summer seemed a long way behind me. But I felt like a bit of an explore on the way home so I hopped up onto the old South Staffordshire Railway that carried freight when I was a kid.

Carefully restored and maintained by Back the Track as a cycling and walking greenway, it’s peaceful up there and as Vivian Stanshall put it, you’re nestling in green nowhere.

There are good views of the canal, Clayhanger Marsh and Ryders Mere, and plenty of birds and wildlife to spot.

It’s also home to one of the most mournful monuments to a lost railway I know: The solitary remaining signal post of Norton Junction.

Still, the ladder makes a great vantage point for photographing the marsh…