100,000 sculptures

My Walk this Week 255 – Calm Day at the Beach

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.

Mumbles lighthouse

My Walk this Week 233 – The Sea The Sea

On my walk this week I was mesmerised by the susurration of the sea, the sea. It was the light and colour that really caught my eye, but when looking at its gentle, repetitive movements and listening to its rhythmical shush and liquid intricacies I couldn’t help but be enamoured of the full expanse of Swansea Bay at high tide.

Still using my iPhone I am frustrated by the effect even a slight breeze has on its microphones – but the distortion in the audio in this video is not what is in my memory.

Being in Mumbles to run an errand with my daughter (Hannah Duncan Creations), we took the opportunity to walk along the seafront to the pier. The sunlight caught the outcrops of rock, made islands by the high tide, on which the lighthouse is built and the sharp edge made me think of the shot of Catalina Apple used for the operating system of that name. Looking at that system image afterwards, I was less convinced of any similarity.

I only took a few photographs and short video clips but the walk was a very enjoyable and welcome break from the darkness the seemingly interminable rain brings. It’s not so much the rain I dislike as the lack of light that comes with it.

hilltop heather

My Walk this Week 219 – Working Up Above

My walk this week meant that I was working up above the place I have been working in for the past nine months. Sitting outside at break times in good weather, I would look up at the hills overlooking the bay and wonder if there was a footpath that would allow me to look down from above.

rocky outcrop

Finally, this week, the opportunity arose and on investigation I discovered there is no footpath and some of the land is private. However, a helpful resident told me his kids play up there and on taking a closer look, I found the route they had worn over time.

It was a steep clamber through the wild woods but on reaching a rocky outcrop near the top, I was rewarded with the views I had been seeking. I felt a bit like an intruder to a hidden lair but and I cannot imagine many other people (if any) making their way up there. With my kit bag on my back and seemingly insistent on dragging me back down the hill head over heels, I was grateful to find a rope tied between a few tree trunks to aid the persistent climber.

Bay Soundscape

The soundscape reveals the ambience of the bay as well as that of the woods. Sitting on the outcrop of rocks the full scene could be heard with deep rumble of traffic beneath the mid pitches of the sea and the higher pitches of seagulls. Turning back to dip down from the edge of the slope the ambience changed – the traffic disappeared, the sea became distant and flies could be heard buzzing among the damp undergrowth.

Back in the woods on my precarious downward journey, jays were calling vociferously. But as always seems the case with jays, I couldn’t tell whether they were arguing about something or laughing their heads off at a good joke (probably me negotiating the steep, muddy slope).

repetition

My Walk this Week 192 – Maritime Reflections

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.

wobbly light

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

oystercatchers

My Walk this Week 183 – Revisitation

My walk this week is a revisitation to Aberavon seafront at this current time of year but from 2016 – the weather is much the same today (as I write) as it was then! But that does not make it any less interesting to me and I remember the walk well, though I admit the images and soundscape are a good memory trigger for the atmosphere.

seafront walkers

It was a dark, wet day with a heavy sea fret coming off the bay, but it wasn’t actually raining and people were walking and running as they always are on this wonderful expansive seafront.Continue reading

open bay view

My Walk this Week 164 – Bay View Walk

My walk this week is a short one in Swansea Bay that I was able to fit in between meetings. I try to organise my days to allow me to do that as I find even a short walk in the open air a valuable refresher for my brain and body.

bay growth

I often use my StillWalks® videos in the same way – to get a short break in the middle of a busy day as its not always convenient or even possible to go out for a walk. The videos don’t give me the physical exercise but they do refresh my brain and relax my nerves.

My walk took me onto the expansive beach of Swansea Bay Continue reading

collapsing fence

My Walk this Week 131 – Wear and Tear – The Missing Post

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!

rust spot

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

shadow pattern

My Walk this Week 131 – Sticks Shadows and Shapes

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.

stick perspective

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