My Walk this Week – Roath Park

My walk this week is from September last year. I had given my daughter a lift to Cardiff and while she did her thing I did mine, namely a walk round the lake in Roath Park.

It is a beautiful and popular park with many different birds, people and dogs all enjoying an opportunity to walk, jog, run, play, cycle, fly, feed, look, listen or just sit and take it all in.

Roath park-2

Ducks and Dogs in Roath Park

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Enjoying the Water

The weather was good to us during my walk this week with the Taste of Gower walkers at Llanmadoc. However, there had clearly been recent rain in the area or the tide had come high enough to fill the track ruts and Cefyn, liking water, took full advantage of the fact.

As we passed by on a dry part of the burrows next to the beach he could not resist running backwards and forwards in this stretch of water again and again. Such enjoyment was great to see 🙂

dog running in water

He also thoroughly enjoyed being down at the water’s edge once we got further along the beach where we met one or two other walkers and their dogs!

Water and Dog

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Fun and Games on the Beach

The sky may still be murky on this Swansea Bay walk, but the dogs are having great fun playing games on the beach. Walking along the tide line, it was great to watch them and see how much they enjoyed it. The patterns of tracks they left in the sand were mostly chaotic, but now and then there would be clear arc of paw prints showing a dog’s direction as it chased a stick or ball.

Other fascinating patterns were also to be seen in the black sand or coal dust covering part of this eastern end of the beach.

dog tracks

Playing Fetch

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Evidence of Others

On many of the walks I take I rarely see many other people – one or two at most. However, there is always evidence that others walk the same routes. In this case, apart from the fact that the footpath is well trodden anyway, there were cycle tracks, footprints, trampled mushrooms and the hoof prints of horses.

There are almost always the sounds of human activity in the background and this walk was no exception. The sound clip on this post has the sound of farm machinery in the background along with the twitter and caws of birds. The ambient sound is partly made up of the distant motorway but more noticeable is the constant “flicker” of the electricity pylons under which I was standing. And then there is a human/canine encounter as well.

Cefn Drum 4 

Cefn Drum 4

Cefn Drum-27

hoof print

Cefn Drum-26

 

Woodland Discoveries

You may expect to find some King Alfred’s Cakes in a woodland that includes Ash trees.

The Coeden Fach woodland area of Bishops Wood, near Swansea had these and other less expected things. We found (were shown) the King Alfred’s Cakes, otherwise known as Cramp Balls, on the fallen branch of an Ash tree. Knowing what to look for after that, we found several more.

Less expected was the beautiful but sad discovery of the grave of Alanna Mary who died just a few days after birth. Near the grave was a sculpture in the form of a wooden dog which clearly took the interest of one of our canine companions.

King Alfred's Cakes

Woodland Shrine

Two Dogs

This week’s featured StillWalks video is from the south west of Scotland. This medium resolution full length version will be here all week and will then revert to the sample.

The video above is in 480p quality. You can use the Donate button below to pay however much you want and receive a high quality (720HD) download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Coastal Walk – Spring” which features part of the Galloway coastline in Scotland. Click the image above to watch the video. DVD Collections are also available to order in the StillWalks Shop.

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