My Walk this Week 138 – Another Quarry Walk Through Time

Posted on 21/12/201818/12/2018 by Alastair

My walk this week is to another quarry but one that is quite different from that which I explored last week. The rock is not black this time but the sides are steep and I cannot imagine how the writer of the graffiti, still to be faintly seen near the top of the quarry face, got up there. Nor can I make out what is written as time and weather has done its work and taken most of it away.

It is 35 years since I first explored this place in my local countryside and I guess the plants and trees have grown up since then. I certainly remember it being more open back then, whereas now the small footpath leading through to the pool at the foot of the rock face is kept open only by a few dog walkers and young people playing on bikes, sitting round a bonfire or perhaps writing some more graffiti.

Dantwyn Quarry Soundscape

Continue reading→

My Walk this Week 135 – St James’s Park, London

Posted on 30/11/201829/11/2018 by Alastair

My walk this week is in St James’ Park, which I visited during some spare time on a recent trip to London. There were plenty of people out and about enjoying the colours and textures of Autumn leaves, squirrels, a range of geese, swans, ducks, gulls, herons, pelicans, the inevitable pigeons, and a bird I could not identify.

The black, white and brown bird in the middle of the sequence below shows a waterfowl which I would like to identify – if anyone can help with this, I would be very grateful.

I have visited London many times over the years and it is a fantastic place to explore with its parks and architecture, culture and the arts. However, I found the number of people there a little overwhelming, though I know it wasn’t as busy as it can be and my visit was not spoiled in any way. I guess I am just not used to it, living in a small town as I do.

Click the play button and then the first image to listen and look through the features of my walk this week.Continue reading→

My Walk this Week 134 – Surprised By Goats

Posted on 23/11/201819/11/2018 by Alastair

Click the play button and then the first image to listen and look through the features of my walk this week. It’s another local forest and while it may be true that all forests and woodland consist largely of trees, they are also all quite different. One thing was certainly unexpected on this walk and that was the goats! Looking at the sharpness of their horns I decided it would be best not to confront them but to negotiate a more diplomatic route through the trees.

Forest Walk Soundscape

Starting from the lower reaches of the woods on the edge of Continue reading→

My Walk this Week 133 – Format Change

Posted on 12/11/201810/11/2018 by Alastair

Hi everyone, for a number of reasons I have decided that My Walk this Week is going to be posted just once a week . . . on Fridays. So I hope you will look forward to Friday for my next walk which presents the sights and sounds of an Autumn woodland – see the image below as some encouragement to look, read and listen to the post.

The posts will still include a soundscape for the walks and I hope to encourage you to click the play button for these and then browse the images in sequence. This does not give the same experience as a StillWalks® video, which I will soon be making available through membership, but I hope they are still enjoyable and give the opportunity to take five minutes out from the hubbub of modern life.

My Walk this Week 131 – Sticks Shadows and Shapes

Posted on 31/10/201829/10/2018 by Alastair

The sun created some interesting shadows on my walk this week along the beach in Swansea Bay. Light, as sculptor, had worked with the conditions left by the weather previous to the ebb of the tide. The materials were clusters of sticks and scattered individual twigs. The art created was both three and two dimensional and the one without the other would not, could not, have had the effect on shape and form that the specific conditions provided.

It was the clusters of sticks that initially interested me, gathered together as though they were abandoned nests. On noticing these and then an individual stick and its shadow, I couldn’t help but notice more and more of them. Continue reading→

My Walk this Week 130 – Damp Autumn Walk

Posted on 22/10/201819/10/2018 by Alastair

My walk this week is on a damp Autumn morning. You can’t see it in these photos but the valley was full of mist and the clouds low overhead. The seasons are changing and while bright sunny days can be the most enjoyable, there is also a fantastic range of beauty to be experienced on damp days like this.

The geese and ducks were clearly enjoying the water both in the air and under them and the dampness did not take away the crunchiness of fresh fallen Autumn leaves underfoot. The light, however, was dim and it is that more than anything else that makes a sunny day enjoyable.Continue reading→

My Walk this Week 127 – Forest Passage and Soundscape

Posted on 05/10/201801/10/2018 by Alastair

My passage through the forest on my walk this week took me from one half concealed entrance to another, past open field and marshland, along ageing track and abandoned rusty objects.

My entrance to the woods was through a rapidly disintegrating wooden passage (see the first post for this week) and my exit was through a small iron gate so rusty and covered in ivy that it was only possible to sidle round it rather than through.

My first photo of this gate was underexposed but I decided to keep itContinue reading→

My Walk this Week 127 – A Seed in Time

Posted on 03/10/201803/10/2018 by Alastair

The seed in question on my walk this week is a beech nut – perhaps I should say hundreds of beech nuts as the forest floor was covered in them.

Whoops! I have been rightly corrected about them being beech nuts – in fact they are sweet chestnuts . . . but there were lots of beechnuts in the woods as well so maybe I can be forgiven 😉

There are seemingly many more squirrels this year as well, so how many beech nuts go on, or grow on, to become new trees may be in part a result of the the number consumed by the local wildlife.