lambs looking back

Looking Back Down the Hill

Looking down isn’t always the best thing to do – certainly not if you want to see where you are going – but it is also necessary if you want to be able to see the details underfoot of where you are. In the case of the lambs in today’s featured image, looking back down the hill at me is a matter of curiosity, the curiosity of the young.

dewey web detail

Their mothers had led them up the hill away from me as I approached on the descending lane, but they halted half way up to check me out. I too halted many times on my walk, first to look andContinue reading

holloway footpath

My Walk this Week – A Countryside Hike

Hike is an exaggeration for my walk this week but I was wearing my hiking boots which, with the hot weather we have been getting recently, was unusual. Though boots may make my feet hot, they are still much more comfortable to wear when climbing hills and crossing a multitude of terrains, than open sandals are.

country lane

So on my “hike” I crossed the river, climbed the countryside lane and entered the holloway (or hollow way as it is sometimes written), to climb higher – Continue reading

Tree Arrangement

Dorset tree arrangement

Found on my walk this week in 2012, this arrangement of trees on top a Dorset hill seemed ancient and magical. I enjoy the formal espalier arrangements of trees that we often create with fruit trees and I like the formal pattern of tree avenues in France, but this is something different again and seems like very typically English.Continue reading

My Walk this Week – Approaching The Waterside

My walk this week is at a place I have walked at and posted about on a few occasions but until now I have not taken a closer look (and listen) at the the approach to the The Waterside.

Starting just above the school, the lane that leads up to the lakeside where the facilities are in which creative thinking can take place, the wooded valley, while bare of leaves at this time of year, is still green with moss and the damp atmosphere on a day heavy and dark with rain.

wooden gate and lane

Continue reading

My Walk this Week 8 – Leading to Local Landscape

I have often posted images throughout the week from a single walk but this is the eighth consecutive week that I have done this using photos taken on a recent walk. I like the sequential element of the “story” being told in seven posts or “chapters” and focusing on different aspects of the things I observe and listen to on my walks.

Some of the walks I take are local to me and others further afield, some are rural and others urban. I wonder how long I can continue with this form of posting?

Quite often I will walk the same routes, but as the conditions are always different and I find familiarity allows me to see and hear more rather than less, I hope to be able to bring new images and sounds to you even when the walk is one I have posted about before.

This week’s walk takes us into another area of my local landscape and although I will not be producing a StillWalks video as I did last week, I did do some field recording on the walk. Below is the first of the sound clips recorded along this first section of my route. The full soundscape can be heard at the end of the week.

Cefn Drum 1

Cefn Drum 1

old shed