My walk this week is one with winter frost and sunshine in abundance – it was very enjoyable. I did not have the inclination to climb on this particular morning and so took to the local park and from there headed down to the river. The tide was not high and there was little or no wind so the river Loughor and its marshy estuary were still and bright.
Walking amongst the market stalls on my way back to the car park on my walk this week around Carmarthen town in South West Wales, the stall I found most interesting was the one displaying hats. I just missed catching a shot of a lady looking at her reflection in the mirror but like the shot anyway – the mannequin heads with their wooly hats looked really weird somehow, especially stuck on “spikes” along a metal bar almost as if they were trophies.
The columns in front of the family courts building in the centre of Carmarthen where I have been walking this week, have texture and colour I particularly like. It looks to me as though the texture may not be from the stone that is used but from a surface addition of some sort. It doesn’t really matter to me, I just like it and took several photos. I selected two to post here and debated with myself whether or not to leave the blue of the shop behind the columns in the frame. I found that keeping it in helps both the perspective overall and also the focus on the texture and pattern of the second column.
Monochrome Madness – A monochrome version of this image can be seen on Leanne Cole’s Photography blog post MM 3-40
My walk this week around Carmarthen took in the part of the castle. There is a lot more to the castle than I am showing here but you will not find these photos on Castles of Wales website. The images on the Castles of Wales site are clearly less recent than my own and do not show that there is now a metal spiral staircase rising to the room above the castle gate where this window is situated along with a flag pole which made a very noticeable sound in the wind.
My walk this week features part of Carmarthen, a market town in West Wales. It is an attractive town with a reasonable connection to the arts through galleries and the College of Art (University of Wales Trinity Saint David – now there’s a mouthful!). There is a lot more to the town than I will be showing on this walk and I have posted in the past about walks along the river Towy on a couple of occasions, but the town is not large and has quite an intimate feel about it with various nooks and crannies to be found along the way.
Looking down the perspective of this twisting trickle of water from the top of the footpath leading up from the entrance to the National Botanic Garden of Wales where I have been walking this week, I am reminded of how much our two daughters enjoyed this place when it opened and they were young children. This stream of water and other features along the way created endless fun for them to the point where one of them said it was her favourite place in Wales!
Approaching the Great Glasshouse on my walk this week at the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire, I came upon this little round and seemingly very young robin. It was bobbing around some tall grasses as though it wanted its photo taken. I suspect it may have been looking for its mother which may have been doing the same thing from the rim of the water feature set at the top of the beautiful twisting path leading up from the entrance to the gardens.
Walking through the double walled garden at the National Botanic Garden of Wales I focused not on the walls but on one or two of the other features. My choices were largely influenced by the light and two of these were the simple and beautiful design of the seat in front of bamboos and the thistle seed heads.
My choice for the first image in this post is however not in the double walled garden but just outside it.
