Such as it is, the colour in the sky on this night walk round Hemlington Lake is a reflection of the urban lights in Middlesbrough. Despite travelling north east for the new year, the weather didn’t improve much for us and so the street lamps had plenty of cloud cover to reflect their yellow-orange glow.
It didn’t actually rain much on me during this walk and I really enjoyed the subdued colours, the silhouettes of trees and the night sounds of coots on the water.
While my walk this week has not appeared very wintry, the photos were taken and the sound recorded in January and though there is no ice or snow to be seen, it seems that mild winters are now a feature of the seasons in many parts of Britain.
I hope you have enjoyed the first of my walks in 2016 and I look forward to posting many more this year.
Try listening to the soundscape of the walk while viewing the images in sequence – click the play button and then the first thumbnail below.
Suburban Lakeside Soundscape Sample
If viewing this in an email, to see the sound player you will need to visit the blog – please click the post title to view the full post.
Changeable weather can make it difficult to predict the conditions and therefore what to wear on a walk – rain and sunshine can be expected as well as rapidly changing temperatures. It can also mean that the colours to be seen in the landscape change dramatically and so winter colours can include the deep shadows of cloud and simultaneously the bright colours of nature reflected in sunlight.
These images just begin to show this effect with the colour in the bare branches and twigs of the tree or the reflective feathers of the ducks set against the slate grey of the water
The waves breaking on the South Gower coast near Southgate may not be the huge breakers that can be seen on some coastlines around the world, but I wouldn’t fancy falling in there on a day like this!
In writing this post about my walk between Southgate and Three Cliffs Bay on this wild and windy day, I realised that I had made the third image monotone. The strength of colour in our surroundings comes from reflected light and as there is so little light on a day like this, there is consequently very little obvious colour. In reality of course there is colour and even in the sea, if you focus your attention, there is a range of subtle colours to be seen. The trouble is that in weather like this the inclination to stand still and observe intently is rather weak and the sensation instead, is that the day is dark, the wind is wild, the rain is wet and it is time to get back inside, not linger too long on the edge of the cliffs however many colours there may or may not be.
And so I headed back to the Three Cliffs Coffee Shop at Southgate for another cuppa and to calm the wind that had been blasting my brain for the last hour or two.
As I walked up the footpath I was surrounded by a sea of red Autumn bracken. Click the panorama shots to view them larger and get a slightly better sense of my surroundings as I near the top of my walk. Photographs can never replace the real thing but perhaps today’s sound clip will help to give you a better sense of place.
Cefn Drum 3
The puddle below tells the story of the weather and the long horned cows underneath the M4 motorway bridge know that story as well as the farmer and I do. Having constructed a coral for his cattle the farmer has given some convenient shelter to these mothers with their calves and allowed me to walk without fear of being pronged by one of those sharp looking objects.
The railway bridge which also crosses this footpath is made of older material than concrete and the various colours of the stone used create a fascinating pattern within pattern in the construction of the bridge. You will have to watch the video at the end of the week to see more.
This is the smallest of the three lakes at the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW). It is the one that welcomes you along with the ducks when you arrive and makes for a beautiful and relaxing memory to depart with along with all the amazing scenery, flowers and plants, architecture, art, science and history of the place and of course, walks. It is well worth repeated visits and having watched it develop over these past fifteen years or so, I look forward to a lot more growth in the future.
Click the first in the block of images below to view the week’s photos in sequence.
Autumn colours are wonderful but back in September at the tail end of Summer, the colour in the Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) was not confined to the plants and flowers. A tortoiseshell butterfly also displays its colourful beauty while in the background of the first image you can see the curve of the Great Glasshouse, the largest single span glass house in the world, designed by Norman Foster.
