My walk this week around Carmarthen took in the part of the castle. There is a lot more to the castle than I am showing here but you will not find these photos on Castles of Wales website. The images on the Castles of Wales site are clearly less recent than my own and do not show that there is now a metal spiral staircase rising to the room above the castle gate where this window is situated along with a flag pole which made a very noticeable sound in the wind.
My walk this week features part of Carmarthen, a market town in West Wales. It is an attractive town with a reasonable connection to the arts through galleries and the College of Art (University of Wales Trinity Saint David – now there’s a mouthful!). There is a lot more to the town than I will be showing on this walk and I have posted in the past about walks along the river Towy on a couple of occasions, but the town is not large and has quite an intimate feel about it with various nooks and crannies to be found along the way.
Looking down the perspective of this twisting trickle of water from the top of the footpath leading up from the entrance to the National Botanic Garden of Wales where I have been walking this week, I am reminded of how much our two daughters enjoyed this place when it opened and they were young children. This stream of water and other features along the way created endless fun for them to the point where one of them said it was her favourite place in Wales!
Approaching the Great Glasshouse on my walk this week at the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire, I came upon this little round and seemingly very young robin. It was bobbing around some tall grasses as though it wanted its photo taken. I suspect it may have been looking for its mother which may have been doing the same thing from the rim of the water feature set at the top of the beautiful twisting path leading up from the entrance to the gardens.
Walking through the double walled garden at the National Botanic Garden of Wales I focused not on the walls but on one or two of the other features. My choices were largely influenced by the light and two of these were the simple and beautiful design of the seat in front of bamboos and the thistle seed heads.
My choice for the first image in this post is however not in the double walled garden but just outside it.
On weekdays in January the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) is free to enter and so we took a mid week opportunity of some clear weather to visit. We have been many, many times over the years since it opened in 2000 and always enjoy the developing growth and changing arrangements of plants, borders and other features such as the bug hotels.
There is a lot to see and explore there even in the middle of winter and on this occasion we were surprised by the current entertainment of butterflies in the hot house.
At the end of my walk this week it is still only 4:20 pm but the last remaining light in the sky is all but gone. In the shade of York University campus it is completely gone and lights are reflecting on the dark surface of the campus lake around which I have been walking. There was no ice on the lake but it felt bitterly cold at the time – however, this may have been because I kept stopping to take in the sights and record the sounds.
The soundscape is below along with a selected sequence of images from my walk.
My walk this week around the lakeside in York University campus proved, to me at least, that it has a wonderful environment for learning. The fading light would suggest it was pretty late in the day by this stage of my walk but it had just turned 4pm!
