Galleries

July 31st – Harvesting of the oilseed rape crop was nearly complete at Home Farm, Sandhills, when I passed by on the canal. I watched for a while as the hugely sophisticated John Deere combine harvester neatly cut and threshed out the seed from the husks and chaff of the plant, spitting out the chopped remnants to be ploughed back into the soil. This is a very efficient machine and they are very expensive to buy. Note that the familiar comb wheel at the front isn’t used during the cutting of this crop, it’s neatly severed by a cutter at the front and falls onto a screw mechanism behind.  A work of engineering genius.

July 30th – A 65 mile journey around the canals of Birmingham and the Black Country. Heading from Goscote, to Wolverhampton, down to Stourbridge, up to Netherton and through the tunnel to Oldbury, Birmingham, Great Barr and home. Only a couple of miles wasn’t on the canal. Check out my route over on the main blog. There’s also some video of my experience traversing the Netherton Tunnel.

July 27th – I see a certain pizza delivery firm is employing it’s peculiar advertising technique again – paying poor saps to stand at junctions wearing giant pizza box advertising signs. I can’t imagine anyone at all being influenced by such a ridiculous campaign, but there were quite a few of these guys in Walsall today. All it made me wonder was how desperate for a few bob must these people be to do such a job? I’m sure it doesn’t pay well and some of the abuse from passing drivers was remarkably unpleasant.

July 24th – I would expect that if the weather holds, the harvest will begin in earnest soon. Near Shenstone, the rapeseed either side of their path to Footherley is bone dry and very ripe. Full of bugs and animals, pretty soon this field like so many others will be stubble, and then ploughed again. It’s odd to think that all the drama of the vivid yellow flowers, the scent, the visual assault… all for a tiny black seed, laden with oil.

July 23rd – Stonnall’s Grove Hill is accessed down a rough track, either from between houses on Main Street, Stonnall, or from a field gateway at the other end, in Church Road. Thought to be a tumulus, this sharply defined mound is visible and distinctive for miles around due to it’s single, windswept tree at the summit. It offers fine views all around from the summit, and I often come here for peace and quiet. It’s a fine place to sit and survey the area on a late, quiet, sunny Saturday afternoon.

July 22nd – How to get rid of a listed building. These masons are carefully removing examples of significant stonework from the Mellish Road Methodist Church, which was sadly damaged during the operation to fill limestone caverns under the Butts area of North Walsall 22 years ago. Never well built, it suffered from cheap, ambitious building techniques, common to many such churches. Having taken the substantial compensation, the original owners sold the church on to developers, whose attempts to do anything with the site were roundly rebuffed by he planning committees for 20 years. Finally, after vandalism, decay and a visit from the municipal arsonists, the church is being demolished, clearing the way for the owners to build whatever they want.

Oddly, Walsall Council paints this as some kind of triumph, when in reality it’s a sickening, depressing example of how commercial interests outflank attempts at development control. But it’s more than that – a decade ago, an application was made to turn the church into a community centre, which was declined, too. Had that been approved, these men wouldn’t be taking apart this sad, decaying building now.

July 21st – Walsall has plenty of abandoned buildings of historical interest. Sadly, our civic masters don’t have the best record of caring for them, and seem to have learned little about protecting heritage from developer’s aspirations over the years. The parish church, dramatically built atop a hill overlooking the town, has it’s aspect sullied by The Overstrand restaurant, built four decades ago, and is now similarly blighted by a hideous Asda shed carelessly permitted five years ago. We never learn.

A couple of weeks ago, town officials were having a ‘crisis meeting’ about the last remnants of the workhouse that stand unloved and derelict outside the new hospital. Once part of the old one, this dramatic building is empty and rotting. I can see why a crisis meeting might be be necessary, after all it’s a bugger when Victorian buildings unexpectedly materialise overnight.

Fear not though, as Walsall has it’s own way of dealing with it’s inconvenient past, often it gets burned to the ground. Trembling before the arsonist’s zippo are several inconveniently located old buildings including Lime House and the former Walkways community centre. The council is now applying to demolish Lime House, but overactive firebugs will probably beat the developer vandals to it.

Welcome to Walsall where our past makes fine fuel.

July 20th – The rosebay willow herb – old man’s beard – has been coming out for a couple of weeks now. This tall, viciously purple plant occupies urban waste grounds, rural set-asides, hedgerows and lay-bys, and fruits to a hairy, airborne seed that we all know. This fine summer flower- often dismissed as a mere weed – is a veritable bee magnet and I counted at least seven species on this small clump near Ive House Farm in Lower Stonnall. As fine a summer feature as you’re likely to find.

July 17th – A spin out over The Swag and Clayhanger Marsh before the rain came. It’s not often I come up into the marsh – the former trackbed for the mineral line makes a good, elevated dry path. The fields were alive with a yellow carpet of ragwort. I had a scramble up the very old slagheaps and took a look at the foreboding scenery before me. It may not be the most beautiful bit of our area, but it’s fascinating and stuffed with rare species.

July 17th – more flytipping. Last week, whilst passing through High Heath, I recorded the beauty of this field from exactly the same spot – on this grey Sunday morning some scumbag has just reversed into the field and flytipped a pile of rubbish – which again, would mostly have fitted in a household dustbin. My mind boggles at the kind of tossers who would see fit to visit such vandalism on such a wonderful view.