tree reflection

My Walk this Week 139 – Christmas Day Walk

My walk this week was taken in our local park on Christmas Day when the park was almost empty of other people but lively with the sound of birds. I had the idea that the birds thought it might be Spring, perhaps influenced by the warm weather.

Trees and geese

Whatever time of year they thought it was, the geese were in flight, but I only spotted them in the photograph above after I got home again.

This was an impromptu walk and as such all the photos and sound recording I did was on my phone, and that is OK, thoughContinue reading

Uplands landscape

Punctuated By Ice at The Waterside

My walk this week has been around the lake at The Waterside – Felindre and seems to have been punctuated by ice. Indeed, the whole language and grammar of the posts has been dictated by the freezing icy conditions.

Icy Punctuation

Influenced as I am by the things I see and hear around me, I look at the light and shade, the patterns and textures, and I wonder what it would feel like to touch, to run my fingers along some of the surfaces of frozen water, hard ground lightly dusted with snow or old reeds and rushes from last year as they poke through the semi opaque sometimes mushy lookingContinue reading

Icy grass skirt

Clothes of Ice

The top end of the lake round which I walked last week seemed to be wearing a range of icy clothes. I suppose I might be forcing it a bit, but the idea came to mind when I took the shot below and thought this rock in the stream had a flouncy skirt look about it.

Flouncy ice

And then I saw the submerged half frozen grass at the edge of the silt pond and thought “Wow! What great effect.”

The last two shots in this short sequence are clearly not references to clothing,Continue reading

fanning out

What’s Left Behind – Jetsam and Ice

In this my third and last post for my walk this week I am looking at some of what is left behind by both recent weather conditions and humans – the ice and jetsam scattered in the river and around the frozen woodland in a semi urban / industrial area.

ice bubbles

The ice was not yet melting but had created strange bubble-like forms around old reeds at the river’s edge.  Also at the edge of the Afon Llan was a collection of abandoned shopping trolleys tangled up with bits of wood swept downstream and caught up in their old metal mesh.Continue reading

frozen woodland bog

Frozen!

The rest of the UK had snow but our little pocket of the country somehow managed to avoid it and so my walk this week was freezing but no more than that. The images of frozen water below may not be as dramatic  as some of those to be found in countries closer to the arctic circle, but they are different to our normal situation here in South West Wales where, since taking these photos, we have returned to rain!

Frozen surface

My walk this week was, however, one I had not taken before and although short, allowed me to view an area that combinesContinue reading

tree moss and ice

My Walk this Week – Freezing Over

My walk this week braves the bitter wind blowing across Britain from Siberia. I have never seen ice like this on our local river, the Afon Dulais, but despite this and the fact that the rest of the country was under thick snow, we had next to none of it! The “beast from the east” and Storm Emma brought high winds and bitter cold but we were disappointed not to  get any snow when seemingly all around us a colour, texture and acoustic change was taking place across the land.

Afon Dulais ice

Never mind, despite the ice feeling like it was inside my fingers, I still enjoyed my walk and the sights and sounds were still different to normal, but more of that later in the week. There was still someContinue reading

Squall

Herded by Cows and a Squall

At the start of my walk this week I mentioned my caution regarding cows and how I cut off across the top of the hill to avoid them. But they were having none of that and following a sudden squall of hailstones I was persuaded yet again to take an alternative route back down the hill.

cows

The fast changing weather provided me with a range of lighting effects and I found myself blinded by the light one moment and then wowed by the hailing clouds over Swansea Bay the next. It was still very cold and although this wasn’t a long walk,Continue reading

Lichen

Lichen and a Dry Stone Wall

Sheltering unsuccessfully from the bitter winter wind by a dry stone wall on the Swansea uplands I took a moment to admire the lichen and thought about how it looks as though someone has illustrated it in pen and ink.

lichen on dry stone wall

I had been persuaded by a herd of cows to cut across the top of Mynydd Gelli instead of circumnavigating it at a lower contour.Continue reading