Layers and Layers – Rocky Strata

The cliffs at Cwm Nash and further along the South Wales coast on the Bristol Channel display some great geological features. It is a popular place to enjoy the breakers as well as the rocks but you have to be cautious about the continually eroding cliffs.

The evidence for this is strewn along the foot of the precipice in various sizes, from small rocks which would still do you some damage, to huge chunks of cliff that must way several tons!

Cwm Nash Cliffs

Cwm Nash Cliffs

Coastal Features

The stony beach at Cwm Nash on the Bristol Channel coast of South Wales is made up of some pretty large stones – it is not shingle! This makes it difficult to walk, but perhaps there is some compensation for this in the amazing flat rock strata at the foot of the cliffs.

To see these you will have to watch the new StillWalks video, “Breakers Walk”, which will be available to view on Saturday. The sights and sounds of the woodland and waves ar, as ever, unique to the time ad place they were recorded.

Cliff top fence

breaker

Tree Tunnels

During our walk through Cwm Nash woodland, I spotted what looked like the entrance to a tunnel. It clearly wasn’t, but the growth pattern and arrangement of the trees growing at the side of the footpath appeared shortly before an actual tree tunnel that would take us out of the woods and towards the sea.

Cwm Nash Woodland

Cwm Nash Woodland

Ruins in the Woods

The ruined stone wall hidden in amongst the trees of Cwm Nash Woods was a surprise find –  for me at least. The wall belongs to an old mill beside the Ffynnon Marl river. The StillWalks production walk I did with Dr Cathy Treadaway as part of the “Walk and Draw for Health and Wellbeing” research project, was done without a recce walk beforehand.

I had been asked to go along with a completely fresh eye (and ear). I don’t normally do this because there are distinct production advantages to checking out the lie of the land beforehand. However, whether the walk is done as a recce or as a production, new surroundings are always exciting to explore and Cwm Nash absolutely “came up to the mark” for me as a new discovery.

Old Mill in Cwm Nash

Cwm Nash Woodland

Ffynnon Marl river

 

 

 

If you go down to the woods today . . .

. . . you’ll find some strange wooden serpents slithering through the undergrowth. This Loch Ness monster like  fallen branch is classic shape from the crooked oak trees of the woods in Coedbach Park.

It is not the first time I have photographed this particular piece of wood, but it is in a different position in the woods now, so it is obviously on the move!

Wooden Serpent

Crooked Oak Trees

Flags in the pond

Light, Shade and Colour

It was the shadow of the stamens on the petals that I really like about these shots of another beautiful flower from Swansea’s roadside verges. I like the contrast in the first image and the subtlety of the same shadow in more muted sunlight in the second.

Swansea roadside flowers

Swansea roadside flowers