Early morning light

My Walk this Week 262 – Striking a Balance, Health and Wellbeing

My walk this week is one I am currently taking on a daily basis and striking a balance for my health and wellbeing is an essential part of it. You will understand what I am saying and why if you read this post.

Balance in everything is a motto I fully agree with, but when it comes to my personal health and well-being, I cannot say I always follow that philosophy. I have been described (accused?) as being a workaholic and while not admitting to that, it may be that I am somewhat over-ambitious when it comes to what I can achieve. There is so much I want to do, but it seems that balance will insist itself upon me regardless of my strategies and time management. 

So now I must admit to suffering from physical and mental exhaustion. While I hope that the past weekend laid up in bed, not attending to anything other than friendly blog conversations, I have realised that I must let something drop from my life, at least temporarily. 

Yes, you’ve guessed it – no more blogging for a couple of months. It’s frustrating because I really enjoy doing the StillWalks® posts and reading/viewing/commenting on others’ blogs. 

The video and images in this post are from an important element of my current working days. I am back working in a warehouse for the time being. It is not work that I enjoy (though the people there are good), but needs must as they say. One good aspect of the location of the work is that it is in walking distance of my home and the last part of the walk in and the first part of the walk after work is this woodland environment next to the small Camffrwd river. 

Through StillWalks® I have always promoted the value of the environment (particularly the natural) as the best resource for mental health and well-being. However, I did not realise just how valuable it is in this sense until benefitting from it when I come out of the warehouse at the end of the day. 

The sights and sounds of the trees, the water, the fields with horses, the birdsong, and a convenient bench to sit on to soak it all in – it is invaluable to me. And yet I find that while it can calm my mind and lift my spirits, it does not give me actual physical energy. So having used both my physical and mental resources, I need to lighten the load, take a break and only do what is essential for a month or two. 

I hope you miss the StillWalks® posts 😉

Bluebells

My Walk this Week 259 – Late Bluebells and Moss

My walk this week is from Scotland where I was flabbergasted by the carpets of late bluebells and moss. Flabbergasted is not a word I use often but on this occasion it is well suited to the dismay I felt when walking in a local forest while on holiday. Being 300+ miles further north of home would account for the some of the delay in the timing of bluebells blooming, but the word was that they have been late everywhere because of the unseasonably cool weather this Spring.

The moss was less unexpected in a woodland like this but it delighted me none-the-less, especially the happy moss monster sitting at the side of the track I was ambling along. The images below take you along the route I followed but only give a glimpse of the carpets of flowers.

I find photographing bluebells difficult – trying to represent the awesome effect their multitude have on the human soul is a challenge I am happy enough not to meet as there can be no substitute for the real thing.

Witness to my enjoyment (and need!) of this walk were two of many local bulls and I stopped to have a wee chat with them as I headed back down the tree lined lane.

Tree panorama

My Walk this Week 257 – Looking Through the Trees

My walk this week takes me from valley floor to forest interior and looking through the trees. The forest is a lot smaller now than it used to be, but it is still a place I love and no matter how often I visit, I always find something new about.

On this occasion I ventured into the interior and realised that others had been before me when I discovered a narrow warn path through the trees as a parallel alternative to negotiating the muddy, flooded track that until now had been my usual route.

Check out the image sequence as well as my view through the trees in the video below.

Forest Soundscape

My Walk this Week 254 – Changes

My walk this week sees some changes to a local urban nature route I have not walked for a couple of years. In recent years there has been a tremendous amount of new house building going on in our area and so it was no surprise to find almost every last nook and cranny filled with new homes when I reached the top of a local hill where there had been a few plots still vacant at my last visit.

The climb up there is short but steep and I enjoy the vigorous energy needed to ascend at the start of the day as well as the views to be found along the way. Or at least that is what I thought! Not only has there been more building but also the fencing off of once open fields from which views in all directions were possible.

But the small wood with big trees is still there and the sound of birds at this time of year dominates everything else.

You cannot beat nature and why we try is beyond me! People do though – trying to tame and take control – but nature will always win out in the end and there is a good example of this below in the image of the tree having “eaten” the barbed wire of a fence.

But now I have a question – can anyone tell me what the species of almost luminous green moss / mould / fungi / lichen is on the old tree stump in image 8 below?

Moss Metropolis

My Walk this Week 250 – Virtually a Forest

My walk this week is through what is virtually a forest. I mean “virtually” in a few ways:

  1. Only photos and sound are used, so it is not the real thing.
  2. It was once more than it is now, a large section of it (most of the conifers) have been harvested as originally intended.
  3. This is my main reason for using the word virtually – I was doing the walk as a production walk for a StillWalks® VR 360 video.

Recently we have been trying this out and after several trials, this will be the fourth SWVR 360 video. It is not being made public yet as a resource to add to the normal StillWalks® video collection but we have been getting feedback which suggests that while some will find this fully immersive experience very effective, others will prefer the more meditative flat screen 2D StillWalks® videos, finding the VR version to intense even though it is a genuine StillWalks® production with no voiceovers or music. The SWVRs do, however, use video rather than still photography.

If anyone is interested in looking at one of the SWVR videos, this will require a VR headset (there is not a lot of point in it if you are just going to scroll around a 360 video on YouTube). You will at least need a Google Cardboard viewer (quite cheap). You should express your interest in the comments and I will be able to provide a private link to one of the videos (with license restrictions attached) and ask that you feed back any thoughts about your experience.

In the meantime I have included a short soundscape and still photographs from my walk which I hope you will enjoy. Click the play button below and then click the first image to move through a carousel of the gallery.

landscape

My Walk this Week 248 – End of the Day

My walk this week was a much needed one towards the end of the day – a day on which I had spent all my time on the computer.

It is the sounds enjoyed on this walk that are most important to me but the images and video give a visual context to it as well.

The robin and the blackbird seem to be having a conversation – and the sheep have something to say too.

Birds and Sheep

The walk took me up a familiar footpath where I noticed things I hadn’t really paid attention to previously – such as the arboreal elbow of a tree or the integration of another tree and old build wall. Perhaps I should describe this as a take over of man-made by natural.

And from my elevation with views I descended a steep track to the valley floor and the river I have so often featured here.

Click the play button for the sound file and then the first image to view the images in sequence.

Landscape, river and route
more perspective

My Walk this Week 246 – Parks and Park Keeping

My walk this week was through three different Swansea parks  – it was a very pleasant walk but one which started with something of a challenge to my patience when it comes to park keeping!

St James’ Park is small but has a wonderful collection of trees, some of which are truly majestic in stature. It is a wonderful environmental oasis in an urban setting which naturally has a regular deposit of leaves and pine needles on the ground. And this is where my patience was tested – not by the leaves but by the park keeper using a leaf blower to clear them. I say “clear”, but really, that is a joke. I find the noise pollution alone is enough to set me ranting.

So please excuse my opening to this post and enjoy the dulcet tones of the leaf blower with a brief scan of the St James’ Park and then move quickly on to the preferable sounds of the birds, children playing and adults walking in Brynmill and Singleton Parks.

St James’ Park
Parks Soundscape
slow exposure

My Walk this Week 245 – Dulais River

My walk this week focuses on an unfamiliar view of my local river, the Dulais. I explored up a path beaten through brambles and whin to a rocky promontory above the river as it flows through the valley woodland, swollen by recent rains. Flooding is largely prevented by defences installed higher up the valley some years ago.

I had intended walking much further but was distracted by the small path which I have passed so often and yet not ventured along until now. It was something of a scramble to get to the rocky platform above, but worth it to get this new perspective on a familiar feature.

So my soundscape this week is almost entirely fast river flow and is contained in the video above.