My Walk this Week 262 – Striking a Balance, Health and Wellbeing

Posted on 25/06/202124/06/2021 by Alastair

My walk this week is one I am currently taking on a daily basis and striking a balance for my health and wellbeing is an essential part of it. You will understand what I am saying and why if you read this post.

Balance in everything is a motto I fully agree with, but when it comes to my personal health and well-being, I cannot say I always follow that philosophy. I have been described (accused?) as being a workaholic and while not admitting to that, it may be that I am somewhat over-ambitious when it comes to what I can achieve. There is so much I want to do, but it seems that balance will insist itself upon me regardless of my strategies and time management.

So now I must admit to suffering from physical and mental exhaustion. While I hope that the past weekend laid up in bed, not attending to anything other than friendly blog conversations, I have realised that I must let something drop from my life, at least temporarily.

Yes, you’ve guessed it – no more blogging for a couple of months. It’s frustrating because I really enjoy doing the StillWalks® posts and reading/viewing/commenting on others’ blogs.

The video and images in this post are from an important element of my current working days. I am back working in a warehouse for the time being. It is not work that I enjoy (though the people there are good), but needs must as they say. One good aspect of the location of the work is that it is in walking distance of my home and the last part of the walk in and the first part of the walk after work is this woodland environment next to the small Camffrwd river.

Through StillWalks® I have always promoted the value of the environment (particularly the natural) as the best resource for mental health and well-being. However, I did not realise just how valuable it is in this sense until benefitting from it when I come out of the warehouse at the end of the day.

The sights and sounds of the trees, the water, the fields with horses, the birdsong, and a convenient bench to sit on to soak it all in – it is invaluable to me. And yet I find that while it can calm my mind and lift my spirits, it does not give me actual physical energy. So having used both my physical and mental resources, I need to lighten the load, take a break and only do what is essential for a month or two.

I hope you miss the StillWalks® posts 😉

My Walk this Week 258 – Salt Marsh, Church Yard and Time

Posted on 21/05/202113/05/2021 by Alastair

My walk this week gave me a much needed break down on the salt marsh and old church yard. Even though it was first thing in the morning, I needed to start the day with the calming influence of solitude in a space I find calming (in spite of the nearby motorway).

I was sitting behind the churchyard wall in an effective audio shelter from the traffic sounds and enjoying the peace of the slow moving river and the sunshine on the marsh grass. As I sat there, gradually I became more aware of some of the details of my surroundings, some of which was evidence of the tidal influence on the marshland – a crab! Some seaweed!

The video* (see note below) demonstrates quite well the different levels of background traffic and wind sounds that I tend not to listen to, instead focusing on the bird sounds – in this case some distant geese flying overhead.

I am sure I must have posted images similar to those below in the past but with each visit to the marshes and old churchyard, it feels like I am experiencing the place afresh. I have looked at the various headstones many times, but somehow those half buried (or almost completely buried) children’s headstones seem to have sunk a little further down, staying close to the long decayed body beneath.

Time passes and everything gradually changes. Whether it be weathered iron growing rust and deepening its pitted surface or the slump of what was once the footpath as it subsides into the river with slow erosion.

The video in this post can also be viewed in 4K resolution on Vimeo. If you have a large screen and a good internet connection you might feel like you could almost crawl in amongst those marsh grasses. Make sure the quality is set to 4K and expand the video to full screen.

My Walk this Week 243 – Winter Salt Marsh

Posted on 29/01/202106/02/2021 by Alastair

My walk this week shows my local salt marsh in Winter. I know how much we enjoy and benefit from a bright sky and sunshine, but in Winter we have to, we must, try to see the beauty around us in different conditions. SAD is not a condition you want to fall prey to if it can be avoided.

This week I have video, sound and images to hopefully help you enjoy the relative gloom of overcast and wet conditions on my walk across the salt marsh to the old St Teilo’s churchyard and back to the fast thawing pond in the park.

You can only allow the weather to stop you going out for so long – then it becomes imperative that, regardless of rain or snow, you take the exercise and grab as much light as you can – if you are in a position to do so.

The video above obviously includes sound as well as the soundscape below but which one has the better pictures? That’s just a joke really, but it is certainly true that sound conjures up images for us and in the case of StillWalks® videos the soundscapes are the animator of the still images used – see the example on the website home page (Autumn Lakeside Walk). The home page has now been updated to show a short series of seasonal StillWalks videos.

Salt Marsh Soundscape

My Walk this Week 242 – Sound Memories

Posted on 22/01/202123/01/2021 by Alastair

My walk this week is from August 2020 when I was taking part in a Sound Memories project called Walk 19. I and three other sound recordists were invited to record the sounds of places described by elders in care homes to Cheryl Beer, project Lead Artist funded by The Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes and Founder and Director of Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio Station.

One of the places I visited was Burry Port on the Burry Inlet in Carmarthenshire. Some of the photos I took are below and the project soundscape that Cheryl produced from my audio clips can be found on the Walk 19 page of her website (see link above) along with all the others she made for the care homes she was working with.

My Walk this Week 238 – Urban Lakeside

Posted on 26/12/202026/12/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week is around an urban lakeside in a brief window of it not raining.

The clouds were threatening, or perhaps I should say promising, to rain – and of course they kept their promise, but not until after my walk.

I was going to say something here about Fendrod Lake in Swansea’s Enterprise Park, but hopefully the video and soundscape above and the images below will give all the information about the value of a place like this in an urban landscape.

It has certainly been valuable to me at this time of tier 4 Covid-19 lockdown just before Christmas. This time at the end of this year is very different to the norm and I am increasingly wondering if the whole thing is a natural warning to us from the planet to wise up and stop being so selfish. An attempt to get through to all of us that we are just a small part of the entire ecosystem and universe. It will be ourselves that we destroy, not the planet, if we carry on disregarding the myriad interconnections we have with all else on Earth and the cosmos. We affect everything and everything affects us. No matter how small or large, our actions individually and collectively have consequences and we had better take note.

OK, that’s the lecture finished – see and hear the sights and sounds both here and around you and enjoy the end of this year as much as you can.

My Walk this Week 234 – The Park Through My Viewfinder

Posted on 27/11/202026/11/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week looks through my viewfinder at our local park and its pond – Coedbach Park. Coed = wood and Bach = little, so Little Wood Park.

The video above of the pond and the images below were all taken on my DSLR, my “proper” camera, rather than my iPhone which I have used so often lately for my posts. I may have expressed some frustration with the iPhone images but I wouldn’t complain about the quality of the video it takes. The audio was recorded separately on my Zoom H5N recorder.

It was a walk taken at an opportune moment during a busy week when the sun was a rare sight. One advantage of working from home (for many more of us now) is that you can often be flexible with the hours you put in. I would argue that it is important both for yourself and your employer (if you have one) that the health benefits of taking a break for a short walk round your local park, or even just around your garden (again, if you have one), are such that it is invaluable to all – yourself, the people you work for, the people around you. everyone in fact.

I wonder if there is any chance in the future, in the “new normal” as it is being called, that a recognition of the benefits to be gained from activities such as this will become a strategic part of business models and company operations. We can always hope!

trees in sunlight

sweeping branches

Autumn – Winter details

textural

seeds

moss

2nd woods

pond reflection

woodland waterway

footpath

natural bend

fungi fungi

Coedbach oakwood

My Walk this Week 231 – Going With the Flow

Posted on 06/11/202003/11/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week is necessarily another local one and is going with the flow in more ways than one.

The literal flow is in the Afon Camffrwd, a small local river swollen somewhat by the recent rains. A more existential flow is about me taking the walk in the first place.

Near the end of another day of regular showers the need to get out and calm my mind, exercise my body and enjoy my surroundings was obvious to me. We have to accept and deal with the current pandemic situation as best we can. While I am able to continue my work in tapestry weaving and sound as a result of a stabilisation grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes fund, I am still affected, along with everyone else, by the Covid-19 lockdown and the restrictions that go with it. It is a strange and unsettling experience for us all.

Again the soundscape for this walk is in the form of a short video, but there are some more details from my walk in the images below.

local woodland

across the fields

early evening sunlight

early evening sunset

Autumn leaf mosaic

Autumn leaves

arching tree

local lichen

hollow way

Autumn lane

My Walk this Week 230 – Disregarding the Weather

Posted on 30/10/202029/10/2020 by Alastair

My walk this week is through my local Coedbach Park and I was disregarding the weather as I set out. Autumn has typically mixed weather but regardless of this, my head as well as my body needs to get out for a walk as regularly as possible.

So when the sun came out around lunchtime I thought Aha! This is a good opportunity for a walk. Of course by the time I had changed my shoes and got a coat on, the sky was darkening again, but I didn’t let that put me off and carried on out the door.

I reached the park before the first drops fell and fortunately I had brought an umbrella but even so I felt it advisable to stand under a tree and wait.

In the short video above, which also acts as my soundscape for this week, I start out in the oak woods where the magnificent trees, undergrowth and footpaths do the best job of calming any turmoil I may be feeling inside. The stress and mental congestion that is there for any number of reasons, but not least our current Covid-19 lockdown and all that goes with that, is handled admirably by nature and the elements, even the rain.

And after the rain comes the sunlight and as I wandered on down towards the salt marshes, the River Loughor was at just the right level to provide me with a beautiful reflection of the sky as the sun pushed through aa little gap in the clouds.