looking out

My Walk this Week 238 – Urban Lakeside

My walk this week is around an urban lakeside in a brief window of it not raining.

The clouds were threatening, or perhaps I should say promising, to rain – and of course they kept their promise, but not until after my walk.

I was going to say something here about Fendrod Lake in Swansea’s Enterprise Park, but hopefully the video and soundscape above and the images below will give all the information about the value of a place like this in an urban landscape.

It has certainly been valuable to me at this time of tier 4 Covid-19 lockdown just before Christmas. This time at the end of this year is very different to the norm and I am increasingly wondering if the whole thing is a natural warning to us from the planet to wise up and stop being so selfish. An attempt to get through to all of us that we are just a small part of the entire ecosystem and universe. It will be ourselves that we destroy, not the planet, if we carry on disregarding the myriad interconnections we have with all else on Earth and the cosmos. We affect everything and everything affects us. No matter how small or large, our actions individually and collectively have consequences and we had better take note.

OK, that’s the lecture finished – see and hear the sights and sounds both here and around you and enjoy the end of this year as much as you can.

Cwmdonkin Park

My Walk this Week 229 – Making Use of Cwmdonkin Park Swansea

My walk this week is in Cwmdonkin Park in Swansea and the Autumn colours were starting to show. Many people were making use of the park on this sunny Sunday afternoon, not least because of impending tightening of coronavirus lockdown measures.

Cwmdonkin Autumn

Cwmdonkin Autumn

The coronavirus lockdowns are taking their toll in many ways and most particularly on people’s mental health. It is hardly surprising that so many take the opportunity of a sunny day to get out to local urban oases such as Cwmdonkin Park. For some it is not so simple to get out and about, even without lockdowns, but maybe the short video below can help in some small way.

There is also a full StillWalks® Autumn video on the StillWalks home page if you are interested.

My Walk this Week 221 – Carmarthen Town

My walk this week takes me back to Carmarthen town and some images from the past, i.e. pre-Covid. There is no social distancing, no masks, and we were free to wander as we wished – ahh happy days!

The soundscape and images should to be viewed and listened to on the blog page, not the WordPress Reader.

 

deep borders

My Walk this Week 218 – Botanical

My walk this week is in the recently re-opened Swansea Botanic Garden and Singleton Park. The Botanic Garden is within the park and had been closed for the coronavirus lockdown.

Swansea Botanic Garden

And thinking of lockdowns and locks, the sound of a garden attendant locking up at an earlier time than would normally be the case, is featured in the soundscape below and took us a little by surprise. We had not been there very long but enjoyed continuing our walk in the park, taking a different route from that on our last visit.

The garden and park were looking beautiful with so many flowers on display, it was a real pleasure to be there and sit quietly for a short while looking at all the colours and listening to the birds and ambience of the area.

What would we do without these natural (albeit cultivated) spaces in our urban landscapes?

Botanic Soundscape

lakeside reeds

My Walk this Week 186 – Following a Theme

Following my theme of late, to publish a new take on an old post about walks at this time of year from three years ago, my walk this week looks back at an urban lakeside amble which I remember enjoying in between meetings on a working day.

urban lakeside

I can’t help feeling that the southern European habit of having a siesta – a reasonable break in the middle of the working day – and then extending that day by an hour or two at the end, is healthier for both mind and body than the 10 – 12 hour shifts we do with just 15 minutes break in every five hours.Continue reading

sun rays

My Walk this Week 140 – First Walk of the New Year

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.

trees and blue sky

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

York University

My Walk this Week 125 – Colour in Construction

I was looking for woodland on my walk this week – and I found it, to a degree, behind the colour in construction of the Science and Technology Block of York University.

York University

It was open woodland straggling along the back of the university which I picked up again on my return across open fields. The colours used in the modern buildings reflected those of older walls surrounding the adjacent York House BIRT facility. I enjoyed the colour in both as well as the textures and patterns in the old, and the cleanliness and hard edges of the new.Continue reading

platform 3 floor sign

Superbug or Pokemon on Platform 3

It’s not really a superbug or Pokemon on Platform 3 of course, but my walk this week around York railway station offered me a view of a number of different trains and this was the front of one of the local commuter versions. Looking at the face of the train on its own, I thought it had a distinctly cartoon character.

superbug or train

The train I was due to meet was to arrive at Platform 3, but search as I did, I could not find the platform . . . at first. The York station environment is very busy and it can be difficult to identify one thing amongst many.Continue reading