This should not be described as a mountain road as the Mawr uplands are not a mountain. Given the conditions at the time, however, there is no way to tell where this road is or where it is going. The only clue is the language on the road – SLOW, or in Welsh ARAF.
If last week’s photo series was about changeable weather, this week’s is about the apparent permanence of moisture during one of the rainy seasons in Wales – there is certainly more than one!
I was recently up on the hills of the Mawr ward near Swansea to assess the conditions for a scheduled project production day . . . what a joke. I couldn’t believe the weather on my journey up there but thought “the weather is so changeable these days, you never know, it might clear“. Ha! Wishful thinking indeed.
Having said that, I had my waterproofs with me and decided it would be good to try and capture something of the atmosphere of the place in these wild conditions. So here is a short accurately descriptive sound clip to accompany the first two images of the week.
Even on a bright day, the woods can be incredibly dark! The trees in the first image show darker than they were in reality but I wanted to keep the contrast between them and the colour of the sunlit landscape behind.
The second image has been lightened! The original photo was dark but only because it reflected how dark the interior of the dense undergrowth really was.
Cardiff Bay as it is now, is so different to what it was when we first moved to Wales in 1983. It was later in the ’80s that the development began – I wish I had taken photographs back then. There are plenty images to be seen in the galleries (past and present) on the bay website along with the history of the development, but they are not mine and I cannot compare them to the photos I take of the place nowadays.
The fountain in the image below is set into one of the old dock walls.
Colour is almost not there in this Black Headed Gull but there is colour in the landscape below. The bottom image shows both the colour and lack of colour in the Loughor Estuary landscape on this particular day.
My monochrome post about this place earlier this week was prompted by the lack of colour in the estuary at the time those photos were taken. This image proves the difference under light and shade on a day of changeable weather.
The source of the river Lliw lies in the upland area of the Mawr in Swansea. To get there requires a short hike across the hills from a road that feels like it is in the middle of nowhere.
This beautiful environment is not far from civilisation and the ease with which I can get from the hubbub of society to these wonderful areas is one of the good aspects of Wales.
Looking for the source of the River Lliw on the Mawr upland area of Swansea, we started our search near another source. This is a beautiful area of South Wales where there are a few quiet, still days in the year but mostly it is windy.
The scale of the sea wall separating Swansea beach and Swansea harbour can be seen here without to much ambiguity. However, when looking from the top end, at its lowest point to the ground, a confusion of scale becomes apparent.
While it seems from the top of the beach that the wall doesn’t “grow” in size much at all, as you walk towards the sea beside the wall, it becomes gradually apparent, until, at its highest point, you realise the true scale of it towering above you. The same effect of space distorted can be seen if you approach the wall “broadside” from a distance along the beach.
It doesn’t matter that I know the scale of the wall and have approached it in this way many time, that strange confusion of scale does its trick on my perception of it every time.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of spacial effect here or anywhere else?
