Sutton Park (Tuesday 27th December 2016)

My journey up to Sutton Coldfield was beset by delays - an iced-up car, a road closure involving a lengthy detour, traffic jams on the Fosse Way and especially the M40 and finally the sat-nav sending me to the right house number, road and post code but two and a half miles from the one I wanted - but I was rewarded by a warm welcome and a fine nosh-up.

I spent five hours 47 minutes driving time in all, according to the car OBD, but did have a very brief stop at a canal bridge in Minworth to stretch my legs and look for a blip (see Extra), and later at Wyndley Pool in Sutton Park, where I found one.

When I was a pupil at Keyes School from the age of seven, I used to sometimes have sandwiches beside Wyndley Pool so it is a place I have strong connections with and it probably inspired my love of nature. It is clearly still as enjoyed by families as it always was.

The pool dates from the twelfth century, and is home to swans, gulls, tufted ducks, coots, mallards, Canada geese, herons, cormorants and other species. Sutton Park itself at 2,400 acres is the largest urban park outside of a capital city and the seventh largest in Europe, dating back to the ninth century when it was a Royal Forest, and was part of the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Mercia. Henry VIII used it for deer hunting and presented it to the people of the town in 1528 at the request of Bishop John Vesey, decreeing Sutton Coldfield as a Royal town.

The event was a gathering of cousins hosted by my cousin Kate and her husband Julian and lasted until long after dark, so I was glad to have had these stolen moments before I arrived.

L.
29.12.2016 (2055 hr)

Blip #2002 (#2252 including 250 archived blips)
Consecutive Blip #003
Day #2469 (471 gaps from 26 March 2010)
LOTD #1237 (#1363 including 126 on archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Red) and Pentax HD P-DA 55-300mm F4-5.8 ED WR lens
Extra taken with Pentax K-50 (Yellow) and Pentax smc P-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL WR kit lens (Red)

Sutton Coldfield series
Sutton Park series
Geese series
Wyndley Pool series

A Visit To Sutton Coldfield, 27 December 2016 (Flickr album)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Primal Scream - Loaded (6 Music Festival 2016) (recorded live, Colston Hall, Bristol, February 2016)
The drive back via the M5 took two and a half hours, still longer than usual due to motorway roadworks, but was spent listening to highlights from the 2016 6 Music Festival, including Roni Size, Tricky, Roisin Murphy and Primal Scream, who I particularly enjoyed. Loaded was the first single from their then forthcoming seminal album Screamadelica and gave them their new direction. It is a remix by Andrew Weatherall of Primal Scream's earlier song, I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have. At the start he added an audio sample of Peter Fonda from the film The Wild Angels and also sampled The Emotions' I Don't Want to Lose Your Love and a drum loop from an Italian bootleg remix of Edie Brickell's song What I Am. These have stayed with the song from 1990 to the present day.

One year ago:
The Old Forge