Category Archives: Events

One Day To Go and Well Camouflaged Walls

Posted on by

These walls, seen (or well camouflaged) on my walk at Llansteffan Castle have some fascinating textures and structures but . . .  tomorrow is the day of moving this blog so –

Please read this!

Tomorrow I will be relaunching and relocating the StillWalks website and blog and must ask all followers who wish to continue receiving their daily dose of images and sound from the StillWalks blog, to click the link on Thursday’s post and the following days to relocate with me to the new website.

Thank you to all my existing and new followers.

Along with this relaunch we will be at The Waterside with publisher Management Learning Resources (MLRUK) to promote the new StillWalks package for organisations and individuals. That’s on 7th April from 10 – 12. Details and directions can be found here at The Waterside.

Llansteffan-16

Looking Through a Wall and Relocation

Posted on by

Walking around Llansteffan Castle in Carmarthenshire was great fun but first . . .

Please read this!

Later this week I will be relaunching and relocating the StillWalks website and blog and must ask all followers who wish to continue receiving their daily dose of images and sound from the StillWalks blog, to click the link on Thursday’s post and the following days to relocate with me to the new website.

Thank you to all my existing and new followers.

Along with this relaunch we will be at The Waterside with publisher Management Learning Resources (MLRUK) to promote the new StillWalks package for organisations and individuals. That’s on 7th April from 10 – 12. Details and directions can be found here at The Waterside.

Now, back to this week’s walk and the murder holes! There were plenty of opportunities to look through walls at the castle which Julie was particularly interested in. Some of these would have been used in the traditional way (for a castle), i.e. shooting enemies with arrows! The most blood curdling, however, were the “murder holes” through which boiling oil would be poured on attackers entering this part of the castle.

hole in a wall

My Walk this Week 19 – The Waterside

Posted on by

My walk this week is at a place I have visited on a number of occasions now, and in a variety of weather conditions. The Waterside – Felindre is a beautiful space in the South Wales valleys at which I will be presenting the StillWalks package for businesses and organisations on the First Friday of February.

If anyone is interested in coming along to this regular open day at The Waterside, please check out the website above and contact us in advance.

The Waterside - Felindre

Reeds in lake at The Waterside

The Waterside cats

Architecture – In the Abstract

Posted on by

The Senedd by Richard Rogers – The National Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff was opened in 2006 but until recently I had only viewed it from the outside. There have been many photographs taken of it, most of them showing the exterior or the mushroom like ceiling of the interior. The photos below are mine.

Different Events – The architecture I have featured this week has all been different as have the events that have taken me to the various venues. The event at the Senedd was the launch of a community solar PV co-operative by friends – www.egni.coop – and are looking for people to invest. We already enjoy reduced bills as a result of solar PV panels on our roof.

Eyes and ears open – I said at the beginning of the week that I always try to have my eyes and ears open for potential StillWalks locations. In fact a StillWalks video could be produced for any location, but because I am looking and listening to the things around me with this potential in mind, I feel I am able to see and hear better than I would otherwise. Using the camera (DSLR, compact or iPhone) helps me to focus in on different aspects of my surroundings and in time you begin to do this anyway. It is the same with sound – listening through headphone helps you focus your hearing and in time I believe you become more perceptive. Now I just need to prove it lol!

Senedd Cardiff

Senedd Cardiff

Senedd Cardiff

Featured SillWalks Videos – I’m afraid this is going to be another week without a featured StillWalks video. I have a number of productions to complete and I look forward to adding these to the StillWalks collection. For now there is, as always, access to sample length videos is available through the Walks menus and you can always buy them at anytime for as little as £1.50.

Fibre Connections

Posted on by

When I started out developing StillWalks, I had already realised that the photography I was doing was informed by my other life as an artist and tapestry weaver. So when I mention my new Etsy shop, ACMDesign, for my tapestry weaving, it is not without reason.

The main reason of course, is to try and sell the tapestries, but I am also going to take the opportunity this week, to explain a little about what goes into them.

Starting at the end – today’s photos show you how I am presenting the mini tapestries which I am calling “tapestry notes” – double mounted in a box frame. The weaving measures approximately 5 cms or 2 inches square(ish) and the frame is 25 cms square.

Mini tapestry box framed

Mini tapestry box framed

Mini Tapestry in situ

The tapestry hanging above the box framed piece is one I bought from the Wissa Wassef School of Tapestry in Cairo.

You can use the Donate button below to help StillWalks. Pay how much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “After the Tide” which is from the marshes on the Loughor Estuary, South wales. Click the image below to watch the video.

Paypal button

Another Side to StillWalks

Posted on by

Many of the photos I take for StillWalks videos are influenced by my interest and enjoyment of texture. I am sure this comes from the fact that I am also a tapestry weaver.

My most recent tapestries are small in scale and produced as “tapestry notes” and can be seen on my new Etsy shop, ACMDesign. Each one is unique and presented in a box frame and at £38 / $60, make fantastic Christmas presents 😉

Some of my other tapestries incorporating barbed wire are also available at the Etsy shop.

Mini tapestry box framed

Mini tapestry box framed

Dragonfly Hunt – People and Paths

Posted on by

Visit the StillWalks website for videos and more

Those dragonflies from yesterdays post were hunted and found in two places – Three Crosses Community Woodland near Swansea and Gelli Hir Woodland on the northern side of the Gower Peninsula.

Both places are beautiful and the weather was perfect for finding what we were after. I wasn’t doing any sound recording on this visit but I will be going back, so yet again, watch this space!

StillWalks is about promoting a sense of health and wellbeing, enjoying the sights and sounds of your local environment. Both the Three Crosses and the Gelli Hir woodlands are places that I will be visiting again with the assurance that, whatever the weather, I will enjoying a sense of wellbeing while I am there.

Images from this series are available on the StillWalks Photography website.

Dragonflies and Damselflies

Posted on by

Visit the StillWalks website for videos and more

Yesterday I went on a Dragonfly and Damselfly hunt organised by Swansea’s Countryside Connections Team at Three Crosses on the Gower. Unfortunately I missed the workshop in the morning and so I am not in a position to identify the particular make and model of those we saw. Perhaps others on the walk can do that for me as comments.

These creatures were incredibly difficult to photograph as they rarely stayed still for more than a split second, if that! This may be partly due to the fact that there were a number of people there as part of the group (proving the success of these events).

I did the best I could and got a range of shots at both of two sites which were new to me and which I will be visiting again for a walk and exploration for StillWalks. Today, however, I’ll concentrate on the Dragonflies.

Please click on the images to enlarge. These and others are available on the StillWalks Photography website.