My walk this week takes an informal look at what would often be described as the formal gardens of Hampton Court. The gardens behind Hampton Court Palace are indeed formal and you only need to look at Google Maps to see that formality of design.
But the Wilderness Garden (above) and the Rose Garden also have a formal layout – it’s just not as noticeable when you look at the individual plants and flowers.Continue reading
My walk this week is my first of 2019 and I realised, while walking, that my first walk of every year for the last 18 years or so has been this same walk. Normally it would be with my wife and we would be walking, rather than driving, because I would not have been driving on New Year’s Eve.
My wife didn’t have her walking shoes with her and although I was sorry not to walk with her at the start of the year, this did give me a better opportunity to stop and take photographs and do a little field recording, albeit on my phone.
It was a beautiful day with a blue sky and warm sun (for the time of year) but despite this I decided that some of the images should be monochrome.Continue reading
Wear and tear is all around us all the time and at the turning point of my walk this week along the beach in Swansea Bay, the high, rusty sea wall that creates the harbour entrance is one of my favourite pieces of evidence of this.
This is the missing post from last week, the third of the posts for My Walk this Week 131 – I don’t know what happened but have just seen that the schedule time was missed!
And the sea is one of the most powerful elements of erosion, wear and tear on the edges of landscape and it is so persistent and rhythmical in its insistence. Even on calm, bright days like this,Continue reading
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
The soundscape for my walk this week in Rowntree Park in York, is formed by buggies and bicycles, footsteps and wheelchairs, skateboards and birds, children and adults – all enjoying the mid afternoon sunshine and warmth.
The sound file below describes and refers to the images in this and the two previous posts for this walk but does not say anything about the strange object amongst the trees that I noticed in the shadows from a distance. I couldn’t figure out what it was until I reached its other side – I assume it refers to an aspect of York’s history but as there was no information on it I cannot say for sure.
I did not explore the whole park on my walk but enjoyed every minute of it from the pergola to the ponds, the gates to the grasses, and all the activities of calm relaxation surrounding me. I like the gates to the park’s southern entrance, and their shadows, but have only just realised how closely they match the pattern of growth in my photo of tall grasses below!
Rowntree Park Soundscape
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Ambling round the pond and through the Virginia creeper covered arches on my walk this week through Rowntree Park brought me to the action of the skateboard park.
I could hear the skateboards in advance but all was still in the water feature reflections. The sun shone its warmth down on all using the park, Continue reading
My walk this week is a gentle ramble round Rowntree park in York but it is written with tears in my eyes. I took the walk on a recent visit to my parents who since then have both died, with my mother going through what she thought of as a transformation just one week after my father. They were both ill and each going peacefully in their sleep was a blessing, but that makes me no less sad for their passing away.
This walk shows my first visit inside Rowntree Park – I have visited York often enough but until this occasion I have only been able to look into the park from the outside because my previous opportunities all coincided with the River Ouse being in flood. Continue reading
My walk this week is to a park I have not visited for a few years. Gnoll Country Park in Neath is a beautiful place with lakes, woodland, cascades, wildlife, wildflowers, history and a great community building.
Entering the park from the lower southern entrance was new for me and I got to see a part of the park I had not been round previously but no less enjoyable for that. I was taking the opportunity to walk here because I was in Neath anyway as I have lately been working on the website for a new gallery in the town – Queen Street Gallery. Continue reading