It was a nice sunny day for my walk this week, though I still had my umbrella with me as an encumbrance. My final view of the walk was looking across Swansea Bay from the dunes to Mumbles and its lighthouse.
I have included a soundscape again this week to accompany my selection of images from the walk. Click the play button and then the first thumbnail to view the images in sequence.
Tawe Walk Soundscape
If viewing this in an email, please click the post title to see other photos in this post, thank you.
Almost back to my car parked on the seafront next to Swansea’s docks and SA1 area, my walk this week leaves the boats and buildings of the Maritime Quarter behind and ends in the dunes.
Looking out to the Tawe river mouth and dock entrance I couldn’t decide which photo to post out of these first two. I like them both – the first for the clear pattern and tapering shapes of the sea wall with the blurred foreground. The other I like for its crisp focus on the grasses in the foreground with the blurred sea wall in the distance.
Of course the answer was to post both! Which one do you prefer?
It’s quite common these days to transform the local docks into a fancy marina or other such housing and / or business development. In the case of Swansea people were not being moved out to make way for the new build and the docks are in diminished use in comparison to Swansea’s industrial heyday.
The SA1 area, as it is known, is situated across the river from the marina but the two developments are linked by the well designed millennium footbridge and a more functional footbridge at the lock from the marina to the river mouth.
The old redbrick building above used to be one of the dock buildings of course and it along with the few other older dockside buildings in the area, sit well beside the wide range of modern architecture.
I have taken photographs of this architecture in the past but the images below function more as a contribution to my walk this week than a means of showing the architectural design of the area. If you do a search on the blog for SA1, you will be able to see some of those other images.
Swansea Millennium Footbridge
If viewing this in an email, please click the post title to see other photos in this post, thank you.
The watery, windy weather has returned but it has not stopped this solitary runner on the promenade steps of Swansea Bay. Perhaps she has paused to take in the view, what there is of it!
Click the first thumbnail image below to view my walk this week in sequence – sorry there is no soundscape this week.
Swansea Marina has two locks to allow boats access to both the River Tawe and the harbour entrance at the river mouth. Walking from one end to the other provides many opportunities to stop and gaze at the movement of lock gates, water, people and boats.
There is (must be) a patience in the people living here and using the the marina. Whether a walker or a sailor, if you are waiting to cross or go through the lock gates, the mechanism being heavy and slow to operate, means that time slows down and there is no option but to accept it.
The gulls in the last photograph below look as though they have mastered this patient outlook on life as they appear to spectate the relative inactivity in the marina on this day where the sheltered aspect of their position means the greatest movement is in the rhythmical ripples in the water.
Walking back along the barrage towards Cardiff, the views of these colourful Cardiff dock cranes were well worth photographing in my opinion. The blue structures with yellow tips become creature-like as they appear to converse with each other in pairs.
Walking from the modern architecture of Cardiff Bay to the bay’s barrage took us past an area of old docks. The backdrops of the buildings in one case and old painted walls in another, both seen behind that determined urban wildflower, buddleia, were the points of interest for me at this stage of our walk.
Cardiff Bay as it is now, is so different to what it was when we first moved to Wales in 1983. It was later in the ’80s that the development began – I wish I had taken photographs back then. There are plenty images to be seen in the galleries (past and present) on the bay website along with the history of the development, but they are not mine and I cannot compare them to the photos I take of the place nowadays.
The fountain in the image below is set into one of the old dock walls.
