Into the Light

Finally on my walk this week I rounded the corner of the edge lands to the salt marsh and was able to appreciate the vast cloudless afternoon sky. The only blemish(?) on the pale blue>green>yellow>orange canvas was a distant airplane. The other mark on that sheet of colour apart from the land itself is a tiny object on the horizon line –  that is Whitford lighthouse. This a Victorian cast iron built feature of the Burry Inlet that I have been to within one or two hundred yards but have yet to find the time to time it right and get right out to it when the tide is low enough . . . someday I will.

sky light

Heading further along I met up with the river which at low tide features some very glorious mud – “mud, mud, glorious mud. nothing quite like it but . . .”  something the birds in the area thoroughly enjoy or at least feed in. Enjoy the sound below.

Penclawdd Marsh Birds

And then I turned inland to view the near-silhouettes of Penclawdd’s skyline.

 

Posted in Field Recording, Landscape, Nature, Photography, Walks and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

10 Comments

  1. Loved these atmospheric low sunlit shots. And so nostalgic for me, this stretch of coastline: I may have mentioned I was involved in a medieval dig at a place called Llanelen in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s, a site located above the Llanrhidian caravan park off the coast road, and this journey through Penclawdd was one we did often, probably twice a year for the first few years until the M4 was extended over Briton Ferry.

    • I’m glad you like them Chris but I’m not clear on the significance of the extension to the M4. Surely you would go through Penclawdd anyway?

      • I think I may have got that the wrong way around — we probably came through Swansea in the early years and only via Gorseinon and thus through Penclawdd subsequently. Faulty memory … age … blah

        🙂

    • Ok, so now I have had a brief read about your archeological site. I must check it out next time I’m over that way but will be careful not to touch the stones just in case the curse lingers on.

      • Indeed … and us diggers, we’re probably cursed now for all time!

        Our reports on around 15 years of excavation came out in the Archaeological Journal and also in the Gower Society Journal Gower:
        Schlesinger, A & Walls, C, with J Kissock, C Lovegrove, K Pollard and N Wright 1995, ‘Excavations at Llanelen, Llanrhidian: an early church and medieval farmstead site’ Gower, 46, 58-79.

  2. Oh the chipper sounds of the sea birds is wonderful, Alastair. And your photos capture the many beauties too. I especially like the photo of the horizon line with the tiny lighthouse. This post holds the vastness and the intimacy too, of wilderness.

    • Thanks again Jet. I felt I should point out the lighthouse as it helps to give a better sense of scale but it is a fabulous piece of architecture too and one I will post about some day.

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