Towards ending the year I am taking a walk through my records of approximately 150 walks through a local forest in the previous year (2015). Each day over the last two weeks of this year will represent the sights and sounds of one month during that time – on the two Sundays I will review the previous six months.
Today I am presenting a selection of images and a couple of sound clips from the forest in January 2015.
Returning to the carpark at the end of my walk this week around the urban lake in the enterprise zone at Llansamlet in Swansea, I was met by one of the lake’s inhabitants! Knowing the reputation for swans being not entirely friendly towards humans, I was slightly cautious when approaching him – but he wasn’t the least bit concerned about me or anyone else!
Fallen Autumn leaves were well spread out on the ground underfoot on my walk this week around the enterprise zone lake in Swansea and it was a pleasure to walk through them. The soundscape around the lake held the things you might expect in this environment including the voices of various ducks, geese, swans, gulls and other birds.
My walk this week is around an urban lake that I have visited before but not at this time of year. It had been my intention to take my camera and sound kit with me but as I was focusing on the meeting I had before this walk, I completely forgot the kit and had to use my iPhone for both photography and sound recording.
This evening landscape at the end of my walk this week in Penclawdd on the North Gower coast was not really very late in the day – just after 4pm. The days seem so short at this time of day, but I must try to remember those further north who, if you go far enough north, see no real sunlight at all through the day. I cannot imagine what that is like.
The sounds of this walk include many of the activities of the place, both man-made and natural. It was good to find myself hidden from the traffic and industry so easily by such a low lying shield of land as I walked at the edge of the salt marsh.
Enjoy the sounds along with selected images from my walk below.
Penclawdd Walk Soundscape
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.
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.
The route of my walk this week took me around the back of working buildings in Penclawdd on the North Gower coast. Although it was bitterly cold in this area shaded from the sun and the beautiful views across the salt marsh were obscured, there were still fascinating finds to be made. I guess they are everyday things at this time of year – frosty grass, icy pools and so on – but looking at the patterns the cold weather creates and the colours affected by the light on this day, I found there were any number of things to record, both sights and sounds.
Penclawdd at Work
At the end of my walk this week I found myself cold again. Unlike the sheep in the shade of this frosty field, I did not have a thick wooly coat but a few hundred yards earlier I had been hot in the sunshine on top of the hill.
Listen to the soundscape for the walk below and take a look at the image sequence at the same time – I hope find it different to the last time I walked this route in the opposite direction just a few weeks ago.
