Tag: Stonnall

#365daysofbiking Trail blazing

December 21st – Summerhill motorway bridge on a dry evening is the ideal place to try long exposure photography, with the opportunity presented by the  motorway below and also down the A461 from kerb level.

Today is a turning point: Not just last day of work for 2018, but the shortest day. Today, I have beaten The Suck – the darkening, grim winter commutes when traffic is bad and huge riding concentration is required. From today, the days will lengthen, sunset will get later and later and the driving will actually improve.

Regardless of the weather, the light will return and things will get better. Today was a turning point, and a very welcome one.

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#365daysofbiking The last embers of the day:

November 23nd – Coming home from Birmingham on the train, I again alighted at Shenstone, but returned via the backlands on a misty, mystical and enchanting evening.

These were the last hours of the heaviest working week for a long time. But at home there was food, tea, warmth, cosiness, and peace, which made the last climb over sShire Oak Hill much easier.

#365daysofbiking Golden:

October 18th – A lovely still evening, again with a beautiful sky it was a joy to cycle home in. At Stonnall, the last dying light over Sandhills was precious and suffused with gold.

I’d better make the most of it as the clocks go back in a week’s time, and that’ll end my sunset commutes for another year…

#365daysofbiking Skywiring:

October 4th – On my way home I had business in Shenstone, and as I returned through the tiny hamlet of Lynn, darkness was falling with the most stunning, dramatic sky.

I loved the way id highlighted the overhead electricity lines, which are something I consider beautiful and mysterious. These complex arrangements of poles, cable, metal structures and ceramic insulators are ignored by most, but are essential to our daily lives.

Few study them, and even fewer understand their layout, function and protective equipment. But that’s the whole point: The mystery in the complexity.

Meanwhile, while I was admiring the wiring, I was being watched, and never noticed.

#365daysofbiking Sweet thing:

September 25th – Again returning through Stonnall, I stopped to take a look are the venerable, reliably productive sweet chestnut that is always so beautiful on the corner of Main Street.

Always laden with nuts in their prickly, fur lined husks the tree is healthy and always fruits well; but sadly the climate in the UK isn’t favourable for producing sweet chestnuts, so the kernels are always small and thin.

They’re still beautiful, though.

#365daysofbiking Through the haze

September 1st – I headed out to Whittington Country Fair and Craft Show (a large gallery from which can be seen on my main blog here) along Bullmoor Lane and through Wall on a warm, lovely late summer day. 

This lane has always captivated me; diverted south to accommodate the toll motorway, a hill was created at one end 15 years ago that now gives commanding views of the treetops to Wall Village, with little hint of the motorway and A5 between.

A gorgeous, little known gem.

August 24th – At Chester Road near the Stonnall turning, just before Castlehill, change is afoot. The old quarry with the hardstanding, idle since the 50s after it’s use as a concrete block manufacturing works is now undergoing groundworks for the construction of a new care home.

There have been a number of planning applications for this site over recent times, and permission for a fairly large elderly person’s care facility was granted last year and will involve extensive modifications to the road to mitigate the driveway.

It’ll be interesting to watch this progress.

August 8th – The rain came in Redditch just as I boarded the train back, and I thought it was probably in for the afternoon. I was however wrong, it seems to have been a narrow band of rain that passed the conurbation, and it approached me once more as I rode back from Shenstone. It caught me in the lanes.

The rain was sweet, warm and enjoyable when it came, following skies that would surely have won an Oscar for best supporting performance. 

What wasn’t so great however was that one more, with insufficient rain to wash it away, the roads became greasy, slippery and soppy with the road debris and wash down.

It pains me to say it but we need heavy and prolonged rain to clear this away.

August 3rd – A tiring, heavy day at work followed by a call in south Birmingham saw me labouring up the Chester Road from Four Oaks station, headed for Burntwood for a family thing.

The sun had gone in for a bit, but the almost oppressive heat has returned. It’s as dry as old bones once more, but it’s different now; last time it was sunny, and baking – this is more of a dark, claustrophobic heat.

I still adore it though. Stood at the edge of a wheat field on the Chester Road under Castle Hill – one of the last few waiting for harvest locally – I looked up to the hamlet of Castle Gate, and over to Lazy Hill and the dramatic sky.

Only in the hottest, driest, sunniest summer for decades could my family have an outdoor get together and manage to get a dull, overcast day for it.

Such is life!

July 30th – Working late at a remote site, I came back through Birmingham and Shenstone to hit the homeward commute just as a beautiful sunset unfolded across the landscape. 

One of the joys of late summer is it’s the season of the sunset, and it was a cracker. There were the earliest hints in the way the sinking, golden sun caught the thick, rolling clouds, and it ended in a banded crimson sky that made the homecoming skyline of Ogley Hay magical.

I’m so glad I caught this.