BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking

On a bike, riding somewhere. Every day, rain or shine.

Posts tagged ‘sun down’

#365daysofbiking Monumental

May 5th – Looping back into town, I caught sight of Morris, the Brownhills Miner, a statue and work of art I hold dear.

Morris is not particularly accurate, or even a true representation of our history, as such, with Brownhills actually maturing as a town long after the immediately local mining had all but ceased. But he captures the spirit of our town, and our collective history, reflecting that many Brownhillian lads were miners, but working in pits in adjacent towns and villages.

Morris is also uncomfortably Soviet, to anyone who’s any experience of Eastern Bloc public art; he’s exactly the sort of thing many soviet states would have willingly erected.

But this lad, pick and lamp aloft, is ours. And it’s always good to see him silhouetted in the dusk.

It’s how I know I’m home.

This journal is moving home. Find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2Ychg9l
via IFTTT

#365daysofbiking Letting the light back in

March 31st – Well, here in the UK is the start of British Summer Time, for me the real start of spring.

I hate the clocks going back in autumn and the self-imposed hour advance in darkness. It’s a silly, pointless habit we started decades hence and have never had the balls to stop.

As I crossed the M6 Toll motorway near Hammerwich at well past 7pm, the sun was setting dramatically behind the forest of streetlights and made a movie scene of the traffic upon it.

I’m so pleased to have the light back in my life.

This journal is moving home. Please find out more by clicking here.

from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2Va7py7
via IFTTT

June 24th – A second Sunday ride on Cannock Chase, on a much better day than the previous Sunday,. It was warm and sunny and the day languid and beautiful. A bit of an odd one, though: The curious memorial found in the forest and the stunning sun pillar in the evening gave the day and unusual, other-worldly feel.

November 13th – Working late, I popped out to close the gates as night fell over a quiet Darlaston. I’d either just missed a brilliant sunset, or one had been trying to break through the clouds.

Either way, the urban horizon looked utterly beautiful.

October 10th – I returned to Shenstone on a horribly overcrowded, delayed train feeling flustered and weary, but then discovered something else I’d lost in recent months; that view of Shenstone Church across the village rooftops.

Shenstone Church is almost unique in British architecture – it’s a church which is improved when you can only see the elegant, foursquare tower and not the hideous, dark gothic edifice attached to it. 

I used to pass through here a lot when working in Birmingham, Telford and Redditch, but these days with others now doing those jobs, I’m more based in Darlaston so don’t see the seasonal changes of this place as much as I used to, which is sad.

The treat of a gathering dusk over Lynn and Stonnall as I return home is still a wonderfully life affirming thing, though.