sunset

My Walk this Week 260 – Under Scottish Skies

My walk this week is a celebration of the different weather conditions we enjoyed under Scottish skies recently. I won’t say much more than that. As you will be able to see below, we relaxed to beautiful sunsets, cold winds, and water not just ebbing and flowing with the tide but also falling from the sky. On one occasion this produced a thunderous roar as the drops hit the tin roof above us in the middle of the night.

Night Rain
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.

Not My Walk This Week

I am away at the moment and wasn’t going to post this week. However, I wanted to share a little taster of where I am and a hint towards future posts over the next few weeks. So check out the short video below.

Calm evening
fence in marsh grass

My Walk this Week 258 – Salt Marsh, Church Yard and Time

My walk this week gave me a much needed break down on the salt marsh and old church yard. Even though it was first thing in the morning, I needed to start the day with the calming influence of solitude in a space I find calming (in spite of the nearby motorway).

I was sitting behind the churchyard wall in an effective audio shelter from the traffic sounds and enjoying the peace of the slow moving river and the sunshine on the marsh grass. As I sat there, gradually I became more aware of some of the details of my surroundings, some of which was evidence of the tidal influence on the marshland – a crab! Some seaweed!

The video* (see note below) demonstrates quite well the different levels of background traffic and wind sounds that I tend not to listen to, instead focusing on the bird sounds – in this case some distant geese flying overhead.

I am sure I must have posted images similar to those below in the past but with each visit to the marshes and old churchyard, it feels like I am experiencing the place afresh. I have looked at the various headstones many times, but somehow those half buried (or almost completely buried) children’s headstones seem to have sunk a little further down, staying close to the long decayed body beneath.

Time passes and everything gradually changes. Whether it be weathered iron growing rust and deepening its pitted surface or the slump of what was once the footpath as it subsides into the river with slow erosion.

  • The video in this post can also be viewed in 4K resolution on Vimeo. If you have a large screen and a good internet connection you might feel like you could almost crawl in amongst those marsh grasses. Make sure the quality is set to 4K and expand the video to full screen.
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
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.

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?

The valley below

My Walk this Week 252 – A Walk Up the Valley

On my walk this week I didn’t attempt to document my walk up the valley – I went for the walk and nothing else. But then, as so often happens, I got distracted by all the wonderful aspects of there environment around me – in particular the river.

So I took some video showing various elements of the water flow and the changing associated sounds and then continued on my way.

The mossy dead tree below points the way of the river flow (just in case you weren’t sure), but it wasn’t until I climbed up the eastern slope of Cefn Drum that I took one or two more snaps on my phone. These include the curious object I found lying at the track side – does anyone have any idea what it may once have been.