SUNDAY'S BIKE EVENT WAS NO WASH OUT!

SUNDAY'S BIKE RIDE EVENT WAS NO WASH OUT  Or, this will turn you green with envy (I don't think)!

When I was expecting no-one, my faithful friend, Roy of Stourbridge turned up on his bike and it was a wonderful couple of hours.

We found a short section of canal water at Parkhead Locks where we never saw our own reflection but did see through the amazingly clean water to the bottom.  This was at the entrance to the Dudley tunnel with 1884 in white lettering on the brick work of the portal above.

We then explored a short section of our wasted railway "of national strategic significance" (Network Rail and DfT on the 8 March) that has been completely cleared in readiness for the non-appearing local trams in, so far, 37 years of trying and being very trying.  Roy and I have other ideas.  We want the return of the regional and national trains that were so successful for 100 years until we started to put all our eggs in the one basket of road transport for everything and everyone.

Trains over the full 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby can take vehicles off the jam packed roads and motorways that run alongside the empty, double tracks of our forgotten main line railway.  This is a much better idea than the planned 11 Kms of tramline to destroy the railway.  Or, the proposed 87 Kms, eight to ten lane Western Orbital Motorway, nearby.  From my research, the UK's new tramlines are working out at about double the cost per Km of new motorways.  And the trams simply replace diesel buses and local trains that could all be electric, if public opinion forced the authorities to do it!

Parkhead Locks and railway viaduct is a huge area of open space that many never visit.  We did, though!  We found a 70 foot, beautifully decorated narrow boat going through one of the deepest locks in the land.  We helped it through.  It was called 'Miriam' and it was halfway on a two week long circuit from Sharpness on the river Severn between Gloucester and Bristol.  I now know what a cratch is and where to find the two cleverly plaited rings on a narrow boat.

On the, now hard, puddle free, and mud free surface of the towpath to the colourful Waterfront marina, we saw the proposed site of the tram stop - NOT railway station, mind you but, the so small ambition tram stop of all things.  And this on a partly unused, main line railway "of national strategic significance"!

For me, the grand climax of the short cycle ride was my magnificent guerilla gardening landscape enhancement scheme to cover the rusting, 20 metre high blot on the landscape of metal sheet piling that holds up a huge area of wasted, flat land bereft of its first time homeowners and renters to enjoy the shops on one side and the canal on the other side.  Roy liked the variety of plants there, including the blackberries coming down from above.

We finished the ride and parted at Saltwells Local Nature Reserve on the other side of Merry Hill from the canal.  This is an area of woodland and an SSSI - a Site of Special Scientific Interest - for Doulton's clay pit that is there.  It's a geological SSSI.

I'll organise it again in twelve months time to get you all out and about on your human powered transport!