Images

June 15th – I passed through Corporation Street in Birmingham, which is odd and otherworldly now the tram lines are finished and operational. I rode down to New Street, mindful of my narrow wheels and the hazards of parallel tracks. I’ve cycled around tramlines loads – always cross at as close to 90 degrees as you can – but they still unnerved me.

The new trams are quiet, too. so I can see some danger as we all get used to each other, but it is an impressive thing, and it’s nice to see Corporation Street not choked by traffic.

A surprising sight I thought I’d never see.

June 14th Every year, a couple of weeks after the yellow water lilies flower, out come the white ones, and this year there’s a fine display at Bentley Bridge.

Caught just after a rain shower, these looked splendid scattered with raindrops.

they always look so perfect, they could almost be made of wax.

Jun 2nd – This is a bit of a geeky one for fellow owners of Garmin Edge bike GPS units: I notice now that under the Garmin ConnectIQ brand, there are a selection of installable, free apps to give new screens and data fields for your device. Most of the stuff available is fitness related, and doesn’t appeal to me; but this app – called My Edge – giving an analogue-style speedometer with clever max and average speed implementation, with other data fields configurable, is really nice. It has a slight bug in that elevation related fields display in feet, rather than the labelled meters but it’s cool. You can investigate the My Edge app here.

There are other interesting apps too – another I’ve loaded shows the current OS grid position you’re at, which I find nicely geeky.

Check out the Garmin Connect service here.

June 2nd – Can the concept of ghost signs be applied to commercial vehicles, do you think?

For those that don’t know, ghost signs are the defunct, redundant or barely legible remains of signs on buildings advertising long gone places of companies, and spotting them is quite a thing in some circles. I’ve been passing this red box van in Shelfield for months and wondering.

The legend on it once said ‘Another bun run from: Riverside Bakery – Tel Middlesbro’ 247181 – Tel N’Castle0191 271 4874′ – but it’s since been removed, and only the non-faded shadow of the text remains.

Interestingly (or perhaps not) the bakery seemed to make the news for all the wrong reasons in 2006, but I think it still might exist.

The trivialities I notice when cycling really do trouble me sometimes…

June 2nd – A summer sentry watched my progress through their neighbourhood today. Sat watching the world go by in Walsall, this lovely, shiny coated black cat watched me carefully, making sure both I and the bike were in order. Satisfied I was just passing through, it posed for a photo while watching more interesting things back up the street.

May 29th – In the meadow behind Alder Mill, just north of Atherstone, this pair of huge black cocks.

I have no idea, but just like imagining the faces of hopeful Googlers finding this post at some point in the future and being somewhat disappointed.

Interestingly, these cocks are only a a few hundred yards from a place called King Dick’s Hole.

Think I’m joking? Check a map.

March 26th – There’s times when you just have to give in. For several reasons I’ve recently converted from 28mm Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres to 25mm. the ostensibly small, 3mm change has made a big difference to fitting the tyres, which has led to a couple of tubes being pinched on reassembly – notoriously during my ride around the Roaches a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been looking for solutions. These tyres won’t be fitted by hand, the combination of Mavic rims and Schwalbe rubber is notoriously tough, so I’ve opted to try a new tool – this plastic hook device made by BBB and costing about £7 pivots like scissors, and you rest one arm on the opposite rim, and hook the tyre on with the other.

I’ve not tried it yet, but it has to be worth a shot. Never known tyres this tight before.

May 26th – One flower I forgot yesterday that really deserves attention is clover. It’s just coming into flower at the moment, as as I proved yesterday, is a very sadly overlooked component of the verges and meadows.

At the moment, I’m mainly seeing purple ones, and their colour is lovely and bright, and the leaves are beautiful too, especially after rain.

We shouldn’t overlook even the humblest of flowers. They’re only trying to grab our attention, after all.

May 25th – Another thing that’s abundant right now is the May or Hawthorn blossom. Creamy white, with a distinctive (and not always pleasant) scent, there’s a huge amount this year, which on occasions is meeting the cow parsley in the hedgerow and just forming a white cascade, like here at Clayhanger.

This time of year is so wonderful – it’s just a shame it doesn’t last longer.