Urban Dawn Walk

My Walk this Week – Early Bird

My walk this weeks starts in a multi-storey carpark in town. By early I mean about 5.55 am, which is why I was surprised that the first sound I heard on getting out of my car in this empty urban space was an early bird chirruping away! It was still dark and I was in an environment as far from natural as possible.

Multi-storey

It was interesting to experience the ambience and light (or lack of it) in this structure in its unusual empty state and I was able to check out the patterns revealed in the gloom. The background soundContinue reading

Water at The Waterside

My Walk this Week – Water at The Waterside

My walk this week is somewhere I visit regularly. The first Friday of the month I go to The Waterside, Felindre where Sue and Steve Heatherington welcome all who come along for creative conversation. Sue has also been posting about water in the valley this past week at Sue Waterside!

Waterside Details-5

You never know who you are going to meet but there are often faces I have become familiar with over the last couple of years. The conversation is often philosophical but also casual and so it is easy to talk. The place itself helps to prompt this and alongside Sue and Steve’s hospitality and their entertaining alpacas (yes, that’s right, alpacas!), this secluded Welsh valley is a fantastic place, whatever the weather, to clear the mind, explore and develop new thoughts and ideas and take a contemplative walk around the lake.Continue reading

Dark Water

My Walk this Week – Towards a Dark Park

My walk this week is a short one in two parts with my entrance to Brynmill Park in Swansea being in Winter sunshine and my exit being towards a dark park.

Brynmill Park

I am familiar with “dark parks” where there is little or no light pollution from human habitation and the stars shine in the most amazing way, but the night skies above Brynmill Park could not be described as being unpolluted by light. However, the park itself was certainly getting dark by the time I was leaving.Continue reading

rusty fence

My Walk this Week – Reflecting On The Canal

My walk this week is along a section of the Tennant Canal on the eastern edge of Swansea. I have walked along this footpath on a few occasions, the last time being a couple of years ago and  the conditions now are similar to what they were then.

reflection

Similar conditions does not mean I have taken the same photographs as last time, although the swans are still there and one posed perfectly for me while the other slept. Continue reading

rose hips

My Walk this Week – Dorset Garden, An Alternative View

Without identifying where this place is other than the English county of Dorset, I thought I would take an alternative view of of the garden as I walked around it. I was attracted by some of the details and in particular the old watering cans and wood, metal containers and mossy walls.

Dorset garden

It is late Autumn and the rose hips are getting tired – the garden is preparing for Winter and the cosy covering of moss on the walls or contained in bracketed buckets makes the place feel well wrapped against any of the cold that will come.Continue reading

Stratford Park - Stroud

My Walk this Week – A Walk in the Park

The park in question on my walk this week is Stratford Park in Stroud, England. I’d driven up there to see a friend’s exhibition of knotted tapestries – Anne Jackson in the Museum in the Park. It was well worth the drive and having spent an hour enjoying the exhibition in detail, I still had time to take a walk in the park.

Stratford Park Autumn Leaves

All the classic features of a British urban/suburban park were thereContinue reading

Ash walking staffs

My Walk this Week – Our Gower Project Walk 2, Bishopston Valley

The second of the schools I walked with on the Our Gower project had no more luck with the weather than when we walked out on the marshes (see last weeks posts) – if anything, it was worse!

Bishopston Valley

Bishopston Valley on South Gower is home to some wonderful ancient woodland . . . and when it is wet, it is also home to a great deal of mud. Despite the wet conditions (or perhaps because of them) everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. As well as Wellington boots, everyone had been givenContinue reading

muddy marsh track

My Walk this Week – Our Gower Project Walk 1, Salt Marsh

My walk this week follows on from the project recce walk I posted about at the end of September. That was the recce – for the real walk we had to change the route as the ground underfoot had become non-negotiable for walking with a group following high tides and wet weather.

Salt Marshes

And the wet weather was a big part of the walk experience for the pupils we were taking out to experience the wonderful expanse of the salt marshes of the Loughor Estuary and Burry Inlet on the North Gower coast in Wales. Starting at Weobley Castle where they produce the delicious salt marsh lamb, everyone donned the wellington boots provided for them.Continue reading