June 5th – An awful day that found me running around the Black Country on errands. A strong wind, threatening rain and late for a meeting caused me to hop on a train at Wolverhampton.
Wolverhampton station is functional, but I dislike it – it always feels harsh, inhuman and exposed. With threatening skies today it was almost dystopian.
May 31st – Since were in the largely purple phase of flowering now, it would be wrong to overlook this tiny gem. Prolific on grass verges, towpath margins and anywhere with decent light and room to spread, vetch is a gorgeous, long lasting lilac-violet colour and brightens many otherwise dull corners.
It really is a highlight of summer and one I look forward to enjoying seeing.
May 23rd – With warmer weather, during the warm hours, the urban cat population revert ro their languid, lazy norms, finding shady, peaceful spots to doze and watch the world go by – at least until it’s cooler, when they tend to be more active.
Coming through central Walsall in the afternoon, this young overseer of the neighbourhood was en repose on top of the wheeliebins in a shady front garden, and clearly enjoying the cool vantage point.
Seeing such characters emerge is one of the best things about summer…
May 22nd – A long time since I featured Jockey Meadows here – the Site of Special Scientific Interest lying on wetland between Walsall Wood and Shelfield.
Usually the last bit of local landscape to green up, it’s looking splendidly fresh and verdant in the sun, possibly because the annual occupancy by a heard of meadow-maintaining cows haven’t appeared yet.
I notice someone’s come in here with a tractor recently though, which is interesting.
A beautiful and very important place!
May 19th – Much of the journey was an errand in Digbeth. I visited the Custard Factory, the hipster area that once promised so much, but these days seems to be a sort of holding area for a failed urban arts dream; but beyond it I found the River Rea, skulking through Digbeth like a dirty secret.
Also in the backstreets, the bizarre, never finished abandoned Duddeston Railway Viaduct, partially built by the Great Western Railway to gain access to Birmingham New Street, but abandoned half-built when they built their own station at Snow Hill instead, now standing as a sort of infrastructure curiosity, barely noticed by most people who visit.
Returning through Aston and Gravelly Hill, I passed from Salford Park to Aston itself, along the cycleway by the Tame, snaking under the motorway and Cross City Line viaducts. The 1960s motorway revolution heard you liked viaducts, so they put another viaduct over the one you already had.
Birmingham is about it’s arteries: river, canal, rail and road. They both bisect the city, and give it character and history, and I love them all.
May 17th – Nice to see, even on a rainy, grey morning, that meadow flowers are now showing strongly on the verges and edge lands of industrial estate, urban roads, tracks, towpaths and trails.
Welcome back for another season to buttercups, clover and bird’s foot trefoil, which serve to brighten even the most overlooked piece of grass.
Everywhere you look at the moment, beauty is bursting to the fore in a myriad of different flowers, leaves and blossoms.
A wonderful time of year.
May 3rd – Hasty, long range shots but of something I rarely, if ever see in Brownhills.: a mistle thrush. Indeed, thrushes and redwings don’t seem to frequent my hometown much at all, for some reason which is odd as there’s no lack of snails.
Yet in the centre of Darlaston this fellow was hopping around on a grass verge at rush hour, oblivious to the traffic and noise nearby, collecting worms for his family.
What gorgeous, proud and strident birds these are. A joy to see.
May 3rd – Nice to see the herons out and about again. They went a little scarce over the winter and I was concerned we were losing them, but as the spring settled in I started seeing more of these dishevelled, mad looking fishers.
This one, on the canal bank between two scrapyards at Darlaston, was large and healthy-looking and regarded me with interest as I stopped to photograph it.
I love these remarkable and beautiful birds.
April 29th – I couldn’t resist hopping over to Silver Street and checking out the canal view at night, also a familiar winter haunt. I adore this spot at night, and things are changing here now; soon, houses will be built on the old market place, and much of the empty feeling here at night will disappear.
I love the urbanity of this place at night; the combination of steel, water, hard surfaces and sodium and LED light. This spot confirms to me continuously that there is indeed beauty in the most mundane of situations, not matter how plain we might consider them.
You just need the right time, the right angle, and an open mind.
April 25th – Although still very cold for the time of year, there was no trace of snow when I rolled into Telford that afternoon. On the contrary, with the trees and hedgerows coming into leaf a little bit of urban magic has returned to my life: the lovely green tunnels that form the cycleways of the new town.
They are absolutely beautiful and a joy to ride upon…
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