WME Flickr Focus: October 2016

It's that time of the month again when we take a trawl through recent activities on the West Midlands Exploration photostream. October seems to be a month for chores - sweeping up the falling leaves for example - so I've been busy with some figurative sweeping of my own, tidying up a few loose stragglers among my archive so that things are all nice and neat in readiness for winter..

Squirreling themselves into position then are a few acorns from Exploration Extra where Weston-Super-Mare plunders a railway sign and a Westward Ho ferryboat. A further glimpse of Chirk Aqueduct (from a safe vertigo-free distance) joins the fray along with a Two Museums teaser depicting a Midland Red S16 bus at Wythall.

To WME Warwickshire next where the grainstore has been topped up courtesy of general greenery at Rugby's Caldecott Park and a watery scene from Cape Locks near Warwick. The larder at WME Worcestershire has been boosted by the presence of Link Common, the stretch of open ground that both links yet divides the neighbouring communities of Great Malvern and Malvern Link. 

Elsewhere, WME Birmingham perks up its pantry with evidence of pub demolition in Weoley Castle, the site of the Raven looking rather sad and sorry for itself prior to the construction of a residential care home. WME Sandwell musters up the Old Mill, a pub that nestles in the residential hinterland between West Bromwich and Wednesbury, while WME Staffordshire scoops up the Cross Guns at Codsall Wood, a building that is sadly no longer with us.

Finally, October was the month in which a couple of almost forgotten archive items were unearthed once more. A Trent Barton bus at Derby joins the afore-mentioned Exploration Extra where it is braced for a ride on the number 5 route towards Nottingham, whereas WME Solihull takes grateful receipt of a platform view at Dorridge station, a photo that was originally taken over ten years ago. I'm not sure what pickings might await during the rest of the year so I'll merely sign off by wishing everyone a happy Halloween.