Another small detour I took from the suburban footpath I have been walking along this week took me to the Afon Lliw. This is a river I have studied in detail – to be accurate I should say that I have documented children studying the flow in detail . . . from source to sea. The project I was involved in was Our River and you can see all eight chapters of the videos made here on the StillWalks website.
At about the half way point on the return along the linear route of my walk this week there is a kissing gate which stands alone at the junction of a small footpath leading off through the fields. The photo below suggests a peck on the cheek rather than a kiss but though I went to get a photo of the reflections in the path-side pool, I didn’t actually go through the gate. It was, as I said, standing alone and there was no need to go through it when I could go round – I wondered why it was there at all but was conscious of not using it. Had it been made of wood I am certain I would have used it but while the idea of a gate of this design has practical purposes, the modern materials rather spoil the effect.
My walk this week was longer than I had originally intended and I think that is partly the result of the straight path I was on. Even where the path was not straight, the bend was long and gentle and my memory of it from a number of years ago was not clear enough for me not to want to see round the bend. The result was that the sun was pretty low in the sky on my return.
The path is still straight on my walk this week though there was one long bend before reaching this natural tunnel. It would be darker in the spring and summer but with the leaves on the ground rather than on the trees, it is no less beautiful and having moved away from the working urban environment there is also less aural evidence of man. The motorway is only a few hundred yards from this tree tunnel but the prevailing wind direction carries the sound away and so it can hardly be heard at all.
The long straight path I took on my walk this week is not all that long in reality, and neither is it entirely straight. Often when walking I try to pace myself and not rush off at the beginning as this allows me to do a longer walk without my knees giving any trouble. However, when the path is flat, paved, even and like this one, straight(ish), I find I automatically speed up and it can become more of a march. Had it not been for the fact that I was stopping to photograph and record, I would have completed the linear route there and back quite quickly.
The photo below is of something not generally considered very desirable – Japanese Knotweed – but I liked the strange sticky curtain in front of the field that it created in its bare winter state.
My walk in this first week of the new year is a childhood memory walk. That does not mean memories of my childhood but instead memories of a walk I used to take when my daughter was at dance class. I would drop her off at the class venue and take an enjoyable hour long walk in the locality. It was not perhaps the sort of place I would normally walk – it is straight (more or less), flat and suburban – but it is also very attractive in its own way. It is quite a long time now since my daughter attended the dance class but taking the walk reminded me strongly of that time.
December, the last month of the year and a last walk from my local forest. Not all photos are from the same walk as with approximately 150 walks there over the year, the selection of images used over the past two weeks have inevitable been taken from more than one walk in each month.
It’s a steep path into the forest from the road but during a murky November when the days are getting very short the stillness that can be found there when the wind isn’t blowing is a real treat. Don’t get me wrong, I like the sound of the wind, but I also like the quiet peacefulness amongst the trees of this small forest when the sound of the motorway to the west is not carried over the hill. Even in the upper, thinner parts of this woodland, in amongst the spiky gorse, the air can be still and the sound of the conversing birds carries through the trees.
