Tag Archives: fields

Early morning light

My Walk this Week 262 – Striking a Balance, Health and Wellbeing

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My walk this week is one I am currently taking on a daily basis and striking a balance for my health and wellbeing is an essential part of it. You will understand what I am saying and why if you read this post.

Balance in everything is a motto I fully agree with, but when it comes to my personal health and well-being, I cannot say I always follow that philosophy. I have been described (accused?) as being a workaholic and while not admitting to that, it may be that I am somewhat over-ambitious when it comes to what I can achieve. There is so much I want to do, but it seems that balance will insist itself upon me regardless of my strategies and time management. 

So now I must admit to suffering from physical and mental exhaustion. While I hope that the past weekend laid up in bed, not attending to anything other than friendly blog conversations, I have realised that I must let something drop from my life, at least temporarily. 

Yes, you’ve guessed it – no more blogging for a couple of months. It’s frustrating because I really enjoy doing the StillWalks® posts and reading/viewing/commenting on others’ blogs. 

The video and images in this post are from an important element of my current working days. I am back working in a warehouse for the time being. It is not work that I enjoy (though the people there are good), but needs must as they say. One good aspect of the location of the work is that it is in walking distance of my home and the last part of the walk in and the first part of the walk after work is this woodland environment next to the small Camffrwd river. 

Through StillWalks® I have always promoted the value of the environment (particularly the natural) as the best resource for mental health and well-being. However, I did not realise just how valuable it is in this sense until benefitting from it when I come out of the warehouse at the end of the day. 

The sights and sounds of the trees, the water, the fields with horses, the birdsong, and a convenient bench to sit on to soak it all in – it is invaluable to me. And yet I find that while it can calm my mind and lift my spirits, it does not give me actual physical energy. So having used both my physical and mental resources, I need to lighten the load, take a break and only do what is essential for a month or two. 

I hope you miss the StillWalks® posts 😉

Early morning light
Afon Camffrwd
rusty metal banking
fields and horses
woodland path
riverside
mossy river wall
homeward bound
early evening sunlight

My Walk this Week 231 – Going With the Flow

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My walk this week is necessarily another local one and is going with the flow in more ways than one.

The literal flow is in the Afon Camffrwd, a small local river swollen somewhat by the recent rains. A more existential flow is about me taking the walk in the first place.

Near the end of another day of regular showers the need to get out and calm my mind, exercise my body and enjoy my surroundings was obvious to me. We have to accept and deal with the current pandemic situation as best we can. While I am able to continue my work in tapestry weaving and sound as a result of a stabilisation grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes fund, I am still affected, along with everyone else, by the Covid-19 lockdown and the restrictions that go with it. It is a strange and unsettling experience for us all.

Again the soundscape for this walk is in the form of a short video, but there are some more details from my walk in the images below.

local woodland
local woodland
across the fields
across the fields
early evening sunlight
early evening sunlight
early evening sunset
early evening sunset
Autumn leaf mosaic
Autumn leaf mosaic
Autumn leaves
Autumn leaves
arching tree
arching tree
local lichen
local lichen
hollow way
hollow way
Autumn lane
Autumn lane

 

 

My Walk this Week – Parched Paths

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My walk this week shows the changes that have taken place in this location since six weeks ago – the ground is now parched where it had been lush and green. The character of the landscape has changed and presents a greater sense of the mediterranean than Wales.

parched path

In Wales we say it either was, is, or is going to rain, and it is true that we get what some would say was more than our fair share of it. However, it is also true that we get dry spells (from time to time), but not usually with the heat that we have been experiencing all over Britain for a few weeks now.Continue reading→

sheep and frost

Open Landscape and Under Cover

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Reaching the highest point on my walk this week allowed me to look out across the open landscape to towards the Gower Peninsula. Every time I stand in this spot I take a couple of photos and on this occasion I was also tempted by the rising sunlight and pale frost covered fields to capture the fence heading off in perspective to be silhouetted against the sky.

Open perspective

Heading back under cover of the woodland my aural experience was still and peaceful and I tried to keep it that way by taking careful footsteps on the soft ground – not so easy when the ground is covered in crisp leaves from Autumn, but straightforward enough when on the thick carpet of pine needles and moss. Tomorrow I’ll post my short soundscape for the walk.

frosty sunrise
sheep and frost
Open perspective
leafy woodland footpath
mossy log
woodland footpath

Brecon Beacons

Welsh Vista – Reviewing the Walk Part One

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Reaching the shoulder between Mynydd Llangorse and Mynydd Troed on my walk this week, gave me wonderful views of a welsh vista overlooking the pattern of fields an hedgerows towards the Brecon Beacons.

Welsh fields

I took a short rest at this point of my walk and absorbed the peaceful day – yes, peaceful in spite of all those international flights I mentioned in my previous post. Continue reading→

Bovine Greetings

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Dorset cows

My walk from the past this week took me up one of the rolling hills of Dorset. At the top I was given a bovine greeting from a herd of very curious cows – not so curious to push up against the electric fence, I guess they had learned their lesson with that. Continue reading→

Seasons in the Sunshine

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view south from Llyn Llech Owain

Continuing my walk this week at Llyn Llech Owain in Carmarthenshire, the sun’s shining bright and the haze looking south from the lake suggested heat. However, coats were still needed and although the seasons may be getting a bit mixed up with each other as weather conditions are disrupted by global warming, this was still the end days (hopefully) of Winter and the early days of Spring.Continue reading→