Llansteffan Beach and Boulders

Colour and Weight

These are the rocks on top of which stands Llansteffan Castle in Carmarthenshire, South Wales, where my walk this week has taken place.

The weight of the rock is the first thing that impressed me, and the way they appeared to tumble onto the beach in front of me. It may be obvious that rocks have huge weight, but I find there are times when looking at natural objects like this, that the full extent of their nature strikes me with awe and I wonder at the unbelievable depth of time that has gone into forming the environment around me.

The colours and patterns to be found in this rocky edge to the beach are also amazing. Fortunately my companions on this walk seemed happy enough for me to lag behind from time to time in order to take my photos.

 

colourful rock

View from Llansteffan Castle

Welcome to Day One

Hello to everyone, existing and new visitors to the new StillWalks blog. Thank you for visiting anew and thank you for relocating with me if you are already a follower.

Insert your email to the subscription box in the side bar on the right to receive StillWalks images and sound clips on blog posts every morning – it’s a great way to start the day (or end it!).

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Things should look very much the same on the blog and hopefully our migration here will be seamless. However, other aspects of the website have changed and there is now a new StillWalks package to which you can sign up or register an interest. To find out more about “Walking The StillWalks Way”, click the link to view a short presentation.

My Walk this Week continues

Meanwhile, back on my walk this week at Llansteffan Castle in Carmarthenshire, I thought I would start with a photo from the beginning of the walk because the view from the castle allows you to see into the distance, albeit hazy, and of course this is what I have been trying to do with StillWalks – see into the future.

Following on from yesterday’s post, a more detailed look at the stonework of Llansteffan Castle reveals all sorts of fascinating patterns, textures and colours. I’m not sure what is going on in with the surface patterns on the last shot, but it looks as though it may be additional to the actual stone itself.

 

Flower Cycle and Reviewing the Week

My last flower of this week is not one from our garden, though I look forward to the tulips opening outside our studio.

Appropriately, as we end the week, these bought tulips are at the end of their cycle. They are no less beautiful for their age though, and I am often attracted by dying flowers with their colour changes and withering patterns.

dying tulip

Structural Patterns

My “flower” image today is not like the others I have been posting. The colour is still there and it is beautiful, but the structural patterns created by the plant are an even greater attraction. I never tire of it!

Euphorbia

A Brush with a Broom

Our yellow broom hangs out over the garden path and so I brush past it every time I go up or down the garden. It is a welcome encounter 🙂

Yellow Broom

Yellow Broom

The Concertina of Time

Time being what it is, i.e. flexible/fickle/short/relative, my walk this week will not be happening. I hope you miss the “walk” but still enjoy my posts through this week of Spring flowers. Most are from our garden and the images are a mixture of camera and iPhone photos.

First up – crocuses 🙂

crocuses

The Textures of Swansea Canal

From liquid smooth through crusty and tatty to razor sharp, the range of textures I spotted on my walk along Swansea canal was wide,  to say nothing of the colour and pattern, light and shade that created a natural art exhibition for me.

The water of the canal may have reflected the colour in the sky on this beautiful morning, but it certainly did not reflect the texture of the barbed wire fence round the Mond Nickel Works.

And there was pattern to be seen in the reflection of light from the water under one of the bridges and a very crusty texture on the pipe structures also crossing the canal.

Canal Reflection

Icons of the Hill and some Pronunciation

Graig Fawr (pronounced Grige (with both “g”s hard) and Vower (as in power) and translates from the Welsh, more or less, as “big rock”)) . . . and before I forget, Happy St David’s Day from Wales 🙂

My walk up Graig Fawr soon brought me to a few things that seem to me to typify this particular area of my local uplands, the western edge of The Mawr (remember the “Fawr” pronunciation), the upland area north of Swansea.

One is the solitary tree and another is the bracken. There are large areas of bracken on the side of Graig Fawr and its companion hill, Cefn Drum (pronounced with a hard “C” and the “f” as a “v” and Drum is pronounced Drim). The colours and textures of the bracken are always there and now and then you will spot a single small tree growing out of its midst.

I have taken a number of photographs of these “icons” in different conditions and certainly the light is always different, but today the bracken had a particularly strong red tinge to its brown in some areas where it lay with the morning frost gradually thawing.

bare Graig Fawr tree

bracken

And then there was this water system manhole! I am not sure what the underground workings of this system are, but this access point with the slab of concrete and a glass jar laying on top of it and the concrete signage made me think of a grave with its headstone and the last flowers that were left in a jar, now disappeared.

Graig Fawr manhole