Tag: Sundown

July 16th – Slowly bumbling over to Chasewater to catch the sunset, I wasn’t disappointed. I was pleased to see the wakeboarders out on such a temperate evening, and they made for good photos. 

I’m pleased this particular facility is doing well and seems popular – and it’s a favourite of local photography enthusiasts who love to catch the thrills and spills of the novice and experienced boarder alike.

Chasewater really looks better than it does in a golden hour. For the time I loafed here, enjoying the moment and forgetting I had a headache, I’d have not been anywhere else in the world.

May 10th – Going stir crazy, I escaped again at sunset, and headed up to Chasewater, just for the hell of it. I was captivated by the colour of a late-spring sunset, by the huge, yellow moon over Sandhills and the mist rising off the surface of the canal due to an inversion.

It’s a long time since I caught a sunset and dusk as lovely as this. After a very trying few days, it was lovely to be out in the dead calm and still, to feel the night chill encroaching and hear the soft sounds of Chasewater at dusk – calling birds, lapping water and the chatter of ducks and geese.

Recovery needs many things, but one thing that really does help is peace and beauty when you least expect them.

April 21st – I was still doing short test runs come sundown, when passing the site of Sid Cohen’s transport cafe on Shire Oak Hill I noticed I’d just missed a beautiful sky. I’m always sad when that happens, as you never really know when you’ll get a good sunset again.

It was very cold and whilst spring this year is sunny, bright and dry, I’m getting fed up of the cold and distinctly harsh winds. As soon as the sun goes in it’s bitterly cold.

It’s like the season’s been delivered, but a vital component to put it all together is missing…

November 2nd – I was lucky to pass through Darlaston tonight as the sun set, and the view over the landscape – today, a genuinely black Black Country – was beautiful; once, this view would have been marked by chimneys, stacks and furnaces; this evening, house lights, clear air and the glow of sodium discharge made the urban sprawl look like glowing embers of a fire that caught the clouds alight.

Watching on, like a sentry, the cellphone tower; constant, contracted, monitoring, trading it’s hundreds of concurrent conversations with the ether.

And there I stood, camera in hand, caught for a moment in ideas of technological progress and the beauty of the place I love.

September 27th – It was clear when I left work that there was going to be a good sunset, and it reached it’s peak just as I hit Brownhills. An absolutely stunning sundown, I haven’t seen the like for a good while – the sky appeared to be on fire, with the dying red light reflected on the underside of mackerel clouds.

A great benefit of the shortening of the day is riding home in sunsets like these.

ISeptember 22nd – It was a pleasant but slightly chilly evening as I slipped out for a test circuit of Brownhills after a little bike maintenance. I’d forgotten my camera when I went to work, and was still without it, so I gave the phone lens a polish and had a go.

Cameras on phones haven’t half come on in the past few years.

September 20th – It was so beautiful on the way home that I decided to take a spin around Stonnall and Shenstone, just to catch the golden hour.

Although Autumn’s feet are well under the table now, there’s still plenty of green with freshly planted crops in the fields and leaves not yet turning.

But oh, it gets dark so early now…

September 17th – The sunset was gorgeous at Chasewater, the calm before the chaos. A lone lady practised her wake boarding to a small audience, birders checked out the gull roost, and those lucky enough to catch this spectacle – very few, sadly – basked in the light and beauty of the dying day.

Sometimes all you need for peace and beauty are a couple of cyclists, a couple of cameras and a beautiful evening.

September 17th – A bad day in lots of ways, but a sunset ride to sort the head out worked wonders. Heading up the canal to Chasewater the scenery was beautiful and the light golden. My favourite tree at Home Farm, Sandhills is laden with conkers and just showing signs of autumn, and the view to Hammerwich was gorgeous.

On the canal at Newtown, the Newtown one minded her own business, unconcerned by the stalking black cat, who seemed a bit peeved at my appearance.

If autumn promises more of this, it can stay around…