July 12th – Passing through Kings Hill Park on a much better day I stopped to take the place in for five minutes. This small, well maintained patch of calm in an otherwise harsh urban environment cannot be underestimated.
There are many species of trees and they all look wonderful at the moment. The flowers, usually profuse are between phases at the moment, yet that doesn’t seem to matter.
I love this place.
July 6th – Passing through Walsall and making a few calls on a periodically sunny morning, I was intrigued by the laser cur plate in the railings and the shadow it cast.
That’s a lot of effort to go to for a plain, mostly overlooked bit of street furniture, and I only spotted it by the shadow cast.
I wish the photo had come out as well as it looked at the time!
July 3rd – Also on the towpath near Darlaston, the poppies are beautiful at the moment, too. Another kind of urban pioneer, these too will grow just about anywhere, be it in a wayside patch or a fissure in some brickwork.
Riding urban backwaters at the moment – be they canals, tracks or inner city streets – is a real riot of natural colour.
July 2nd – Passing through Leomonsley in Lichfield later in the evening, I note it’s holiday time for the Australian snails who currently have a bit of a beach party going on.
I won’t make any bones about this: The Lichfeldian ‘A-Snailian’ cult is bonkers, childish, utter nonsense and totally, totally brilliant. People regularly take diversions in their routes to see what the snails are up to.
Find out more here – Facebook (sorry).
I love it to bits.
July 1st – Out and about for a ride to Elford and Croxall, I spotted that the Himalayan balsam was now in flower in many places.
An absolutely beautiful flower, but it smells metallic and unpleasant, and is an invasive species brought here by the Victorians. It now densely populates riverbanks, brooks and any damp ground, growing to a meter or two high and shading out anything beneath it.
A real, but beautiful problem.
June 29th – A grey, wet afternoon in Tipton, and I noticed something I’ve passed maybe hundreds of times but not noticed: an odd little bit of civil engineering.
Just on the corner of Wood Street and Owen Road, effectively right on Tipton’s High Street, a circular bench feature, that’s actually concealing the top of a storm buffer.
A storm buffer is a large subterranean tank usually made from reinforced concrete pipe that acts to store rainwater surges in the event of a storm, buffering the deluge and releasing the water slowly into the drainage system at a manageable rate.
It’s unusual to see one proud of the ground, and even more so in such a prominent location.
That’s quite clever, and surprised I’ve never noticed it.
June 25th – better day, but not for the weather. I was looking forward to a longish ride out, but the ongoing local issues and squally weather meant the ride I’d hoped for wasn’t going to happen. I contented myself with a loop around Brownhills, Chasewater and Walsall Wood.
At Anglesey Wharf, despite the poor day, the wild sweetpeas have clearly survived the scrub clearance last Autumn and are blooming beautifully around the old coal-loading chutes.
They cheered me up immensely, and I still find it remarkable that such lovely flowers sprout from what was once a dirty, grimy place. fantastic to see.
June 16th – This poor, out of focus photo shows something I was very surprised and quite lucky to find – a lapwing chick.
There were two of these long-leeged wee birds in the middle of Bullmoor Lane, and my approach scattered them into the margins of the road. The shrieking above alerted me to the presence of the parents, and after a quick phot, I left well alone.
These curious, ground-nesting birds will be fine and it’s hard to believe these lanky, spotty wee balls of fluff grow into the elegant, wheeling aerial acrobats that their parents are.
A treat on a warm summer afternoon.
June 15th As I cycled home up the Scarborough Road in Pleck, I noticed some banners on the railings of the Abu Bakr Islamic School on the old Edward Shelley School site.
Pupils and staff had taken time to make signs thanking firefighters involved in the terrible Grenfell House disaster in London.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this school observe support for victims of tragedy: they had banners in support of the victims of the terrible French terror attacks of 2016.
It’s so nice to see this. It made me stop, and think and that’s no bad thing. My compliments to those who undertook this small but significant act of solidarity with those who do their best to protect and save us all from peril, and great risk to their own safety.
June 14th – I notice that on the embankment on the north side of the Black Cock Bridge in Walsall Wood, the vipers bugloss is flowering again. In 2014, this was very prolific, in full bloom for about 20-30 metres, but now is sadly confined to just the one clump.
A beautiful flower though, and one I’ve not seen anywhere else locally.
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