My Walk this Week 255 – Calm Day at the Beach

Posted on 30/04/202126/04/2021 by Alastair

My walk this week is from Swansea Bay – it wasn’t the brightest or warmest of days but it was definitely a calm day at the beach. You can see from the sea that it was flat calm and the incoming tide featured not so much waves as ripples – it was very peaceful.

Fortunately Swansea Bay is quite expansive and this meant that all the people taking advantage of being allowed out (lockdowns and all that) still had plenty of space between them. I’m not sure how much the birds appreciated the calm weather – certainly the gulls seemed a bit irritable, bickering between each other as they do. It always appears to me that when the wind is up, if anything enjoys the blusters and gusts by the sea, it is the gulls more than anything else.

The colours in the images below show a darker day than it felt, but they are calm. The textures and perspective seen on the beach from thousands of worm casts really excited me but I did not get a satisfactory close up.

My Walk this Week 234 – The Park Through My Viewfinder

Posted on 27/11/202026/11/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week looks through my viewfinder at our local park and its pond – Coedbach Park. Coed = wood and Bach = little, so Little Wood Park.

The video above of the pond and the images below were all taken on my DSLR, my “proper” camera, rather than my iPhone which I have used so often lately for my posts. I may have expressed some frustration with the iPhone images but I wouldn’t complain about the quality of the video it takes. The audio was recorded separately on my Zoom H5N recorder.

It was a walk taken at an opportune moment during a busy week when the sun was a rare sight. One advantage of working from home (for many more of us now) is that you can often be flexible with the hours you put in. I would argue that it is important both for yourself and your employer (if you have one) that the health benefits of taking a break for a short walk round your local park, or even just around your garden (again, if you have one), are such that it is invaluable to all – yourself, the people you work for, the people around you. everyone in fact.

I wonder if there is any chance in the future, in the “new normal” as it is being called, that a recognition of the benefits to be gained from activities such as this will become a strategic part of business models and company operations. We can always hope!

trees in sunlight

sweeping branches

Autumn – Winter details

textural

seeds

moss

2nd woods

pond reflection

woodland waterway

footpath

natural bend

fungi fungi

Coedbach oakwood

My Walk this Week 192 – Maritime Reflections

Posted on 31/01/202004/02/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week is from Swansea Bay and Maritime Quarter and, yet again, followed meetings, one of which was on my phone as I stood at the side of the marina and watched the still water reflecting the yacht masts and a blue sky with just one or two white clouds.

As I stood there the reflections were almost as straight as the masts themselves as the water was so still. Later on, after visiting the beach and listing to the rhythm of the waves, I returned to find the marina water rippled with activityContinue reading→

My Walk this Week 152 – Sound of Sunny Seaside Larks

Posted on 29/03/201927/03/2019 by Alastair

My walk this week is from the burrows and beach at Kenfig on the South Wales coast where, on a sunny Sunday, we heard the most beautiful sound of seaside larks rejoicing in the afternoon sunshine. Both they and the wonderful weather made for a very enjoyable walk through the dunes and down to the expansive beach and an ebb tide.

Heading first for Kenfig Pool, it seemed the water level was up from recent rain and to judge from the route we were forced to take to get to the beach, the recent storms had fulfilled their aim of dumping as much rain as possible in as short a time as possible. Continue reading→

My Walk this Week 132 – Another Walk Another Bay

Posted on 05/11/201831/10/2018 by Alastair

My walk this week is from another bay not far from where I was walking last week and though it is quite different, it is just as expansive as the last one. Llanelli Bay on the Loughor Estuary in Wales provides just about as long a walk as you would like but I stuck to the eastern end of it thinking there might be fewer people there.

Please understand that I am not desperate to get away from people (I like people really) but I also like my solitary walks. You will be ale to hear in my soundscape for this week (to be posted as usual on Friday) that if there were not crowds of people, the sounds of those that were there, particularly children and dogs, carried easily in across the mud flats and sand. Continue reading→

Scottish Seas 3 – The Subtleties of Surface

Posted on 03/08/201831/07/2018 by Alastair

The surface of the sea is constantly changing – colour, pattern, texture – it all depends, from moment to moment, on the changing conditions of light, wind, currents and the pull of the sun and moon.

However rough or calm the sea is, the changing patterns on the surface of the water can hold my attention for a long time. The longer I look, the more subtleties I see and although there is an overall rhythm to the motion, that too changes gradually as the tide gently rises and falls against the rocks and seaweed – see the video below.

The longer you sit quietly, the less you are noticed byContinue reading→

Scottish Seas 1 – All Quiet on the South West Coast

Posted on 30/07/201828/07/2018 by Alastair

From Scottish skies last week to Scottish seas this week and all is still and quiet – the gentle ripples on surface and sand reflect the warm breeze of an unusually warm Summer.

No drama in the form of storms and crashing waves, just the peaceful lap of the gentlest of tides and the hot hazy light that so often disguised the horizon and prompted me, on occasion, to play with focus.Continue reading→

Dark Still Mirror and Expanding Ripples

Posted on 29/11/201727/11/2017 by Alastair

My walk this week took me under and over a number of structures spanning the Tennant Canal – railway track, vehicle track, road, motorway, footbridge and gantry. Underneath these the sound changed and the dark mirror that was the still water of the canal was broken by expanding ripples as drips dripped from the structures above.

Walking over the gantry and footbridge gave me a slightly elevated view of the of the woodland reflections in the dark water. That does not mean the water was dark, in fact it was beautifully clear.Continue reading→

Tag Archives: ripples