March 13th – Up onto the Chase via Pye Green over Brockton Field and down into Sherbrooke Valley: over to Milford, then onto the Shugborough Estate and the canal, returning via Rugeley and Longdon.
A remarkable, beautiful, mist shrouded sunset – and Sherbrrok Valley was as wide open, deserted and cinematic as ever.
I really missed this.
March 7th – I don’t often ride through The Butts in Walsall, although it’s a lovely place. The tightly packed streets of traditional terraces are lined with parked cars, and any ride through this fascinating place is marred by conflict with other traffic, which is a great shame as I miss scenes like this.
Stopping to wait for my companion caught up further back, I looked up Borneo Street to see a perspective sunset, perfectly replete with TV aerials, chimneys and the ghostly white LED street lights.
I could really love this place, were it not such a challenge to cycle around.
March 7th – Meeting a friend of the train at Walsall to ride home together, the sunset was vivid and beautiful. This isn’t the most handsome of stations, trapped in the red-brick late 70s gap been brutalism and the utilitarianism of the 80s, it’s functional and a decent place to get a train or wait.
I don’t know why, but I love this place at twilight.
March 1st – Aargh, that frustration – a great sunset and nowhere to get a good shot of it. Returning home tired and aching, dusk found me passing through Shelfield. Sadly, Shelfield is pretty flat and has no great viewpoints, sadly, and these images don’t really do it justice.
I bet it was a good one at Chasewater or up on the Beacon…
February 18th – I passed through Lichfield just at the right time and had time to get this classic Lichfield shot. I think every local photographer has done this one at one time or another, but you really can’t resist such a gorgeous sight.
Lichfield, for a relatively flat place, does have some beautiful views.
February 15th – A few weeks ago I was recording this view at this time in darkness. The twin sisters of Wednesbury looking beautiful in the cold evening light of a winter sunset.
I love this view and never tire of it.
It was just about light until I got home – soon I’ll be travelling in the daylight again. This makes me very happy indeed.
February 14th – Also caught in the sunset was the M6 Toll, Britain’s toll motorway, recently put up for sale by it’s banker owners, presumably because this botched, badly conceived project isn’t making enough money.
Frequently next to empty, people never flocked to use it as the tolls were considered too high, and the whole misadventure – which was at one time to be the future of such roads in the UK – does little except illustrate the folly of a country where we can no longer invest in anything for the common good.
When everything – even the most basic infrastructure schemes – have to turn a profit – then this is what we end up with. We need to stop thinking about price and get back to value.
February 14th – A sunset spin around Brownhills on a bitingly cold, but thankfully dry afternoon. This is again the season of good fine sunsets, and cold days like these are usually rewarding. Chasewater was as beautiful as ever, but the beauty caught Newtown and the canal, too, and it was a pleasure to cycle in. Hopefully with the lengthening days and drier weather I can get up on the Chase soon. I’m so missing it, but since Christmas it’s been so muddy it’s been very difficult going from what I’ve heard.
Evenings like this make me optimistic that the current spell of bad weather will be settling down soon.
February 11th – Monkeying around with the Clayhanger overflow view again. I liked the sky, and reflections: not quite really dark, I think this worked quite well.
Nice to feel that chill in the air, too. Dry and cold, this is how it should be in February!
February 10th – I’m quite liking the weather this week since it’s calmed down a bit. Cooler, clearer, some great evening skies. Sunset now well after 5pm, which means I’ll soon be commuting home in the light again.
In the meantime, stood silent sentry, but buzzing with unseen data, the cellphone station in Darlaston was a beautiful contrast to the black country dusk.
It seemed to be trading secrets with that beautiful crescent moon – which, as my grandfather might have said ‘is lying on it’s back and holding rain in its belly’ – so perhaps it’s not a good sign…
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