My walk this week was a spur of the moment visit to the National Botanic Garden of Wales – worthwhile for the thick growth inside and out at this time of year.
The lakeside flowers, kitchen garden and double walled garden were blooming well and if I could only present the scents as well as the sights and sounds, the sensory picture would be almost complete.Continue reading
My walk this week is back up on top of The Mawr again – this time as a visit to the Awel Aman Tawe Community Wind Farm above Cwmgors. It was a beautiful day and the wind was blowing well, with the result that the turbine blades were turning fast and producing the electricity they were designed for.
This moorland is on the eastern edge The Mawr – in fact I am not even sure if it is considered part of that upland landscape! Whether it is or not, the scenery is beautiful with views over to Pen-y-Fan, the Brecon Beacons highest peak and a peacefulness most of the time that I have spoken of before.Continue reading
My walk this week is in the mid-summer mist of the Swansea uplands known as The Mawr. The sun was shining the day before!
The last time I visited Penlle’r Castell at the highest point on The Mawr, the weather was different to what I was expecting on this occasion in mid Summer – you can see it here ! Uplands are unpredictable landscapes at any time of year I guess. Continue reading
My walk this week takes a further look at wildflowers, this time they are around the lake at The Waterside. I admit I do not know either the common names or the Latin of most of the flowers, but that does not spoil my enjoyment of them one tiny little bit.
Their beauty and the ecology associated with them is something I appreciate without knowing the details. I suspect the house martins speed-flying low across the surface of the lake, darting left, right, up and down to catch insects inContinue reading
My walk this week is a short one in Swansea Bay that I was able to fit in between meetings. I try to organise my days to allow me to do that as I find even a short walk in the open air a valuable refresher for my brain and body.
I often use my StillWalks® videos in the same way – to get a short break in the middle of a busy day as its not always convenient or even possible to go out for a walk. The videos don’t give me the physical exercise but they do refresh my brain and relax my nerves.
My walk took me onto the expansive beach of Swansea Bay Continue reading
My walk this week looks back at a walk on the North Gower coast and the expansive and beautiful salt marshes of the Loughor Estuary. The walk was originally taken as part of the “Taste of Gower” project in 2015.
Sheep graze the marsh grass and herbs from day to day and when the tides cover the the greenery, they move on and off the marshes via “causeways” such as the one above.
The sense of space and the distortion of perspective gives the place a strange, unreal feeling. Distance is difficult to judge and I suspect you would need to be careful of the incoming tide if unused to the area.Continue reading
My walk this week follows high spring tides on my local marshes and looks at the deposits they left as well as the new wildflower and marsh grass growth coming through with Spring.
Bluebells en route
Spring tides occur twice a month every month, as do neap tides, not just in the Spring. The term “spring tide” is given to those tides that have the greatest difference in height between high and low tide, but the highest tidesContinue reading
My walk this week is from 2009 – let me explain. My wife was recently surprised by the Photos app on her iPhone telling her she had a new memory which turned out to be from Whitby in 2009. That seems to me to be an old memory, not a new one. However, I checked the memory section of my own Photos app and found a similar set from the same holiday we had taken.
When looking through the photos it was the one above that caught my eye (apart from the happy family snapshots) – I like the form created by the angle it is taken from. On looking more closely at the images, Continue reading