The A470 main road runs more or less parallel to this, the original road to Brecon, the regional town of the Brecon Beacons. I suspect it was relatively busy in its day but perhaps a little quieter than the current road.
There may have been quite a lot of people on my walk this week but I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I did.
Pen y Fan Voices
Taf Fechan
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Walking with the Living Taff group, our mini expedition to find the two sources of the River Taff, or Afon Taf, on the slopes of Pen y Fan and Corn Du in the Brecon Beacons, we took a short cut across open grassland to the second and larger source of the river, the Taf Fawr.
“Fawr” meaning big, the source was indeed larger than the previous one round the other side of the mountain, but the river at this stage of its life is still quite small as you would expect.
Walking through the dry, scratchy, springy grass was a very pleasant sensation. We listened to the sound of our footsteps and thought about its texture and colour and the peacefulness of this part of our walk.
I managed to record a small snippet of this part of our walk and whilst the soft murmur of voices from the rest of the group is still in the background, there is also the gentle flow of this youngest stage of the river accompanied by the flow of a warm breeze through the grass and across the shoulder of the hill. We had enjoyed the skylarks too but at the point of recording, they had decided to keep quiet.
Taf Fawr
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As I approached the first, (or smaller) source of the River Taff, Blaen Taf Fechan (correction – Taf Fechan, see comments on previous post), on my walk this week with the Living Taff group, I took yet another of my frequent stops to look at the view. Looking south from the slopes of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons, I could see all the way to the Bristol Channel, Flat Holm island and beyond to Somerset in England.
England can’t be seen in the shot above which concentrates on the patterns and textures on the slopes of Craig Gwaun Taf which leads up to Corn Du, but the first of the shots below gives a pretty good wider view of the scene, even though the distant atmosphere was quite hazy. In the closer surroundings of the mountains the colours and patterns of light and shade kept changing with the passing clouds.
The Blaen Taf Fechan (below) joins the Blaen Taf Fawr (correction – Taf Fawr, see comments on previous post) at Merthyr Tydfil to become the Afon Taf or River Taff which then flows on down to Wales’ capital city, Cardiff.
These photos are devoid of humans but they were there and there was the constant murmur of voices all around us. It wasn’t disturbing or even annoying really, just present.
Pen y Fan Voices
You may have noticed that I have recently changed the title of these end of the week posts to “Reviewing the Walk” rather than “Reviewing the Week”. It seems such an obvious thing to do, I don’t understand why I haven’t done it sooner.
This weeks misty walk on the hills ends with a view over the town that shows the mist is still lingering there. I foundContinue reading
Descending from the top of the hill on my walk this week meant re-entering the mist. In fact the mist was descending with me and thinning as I walked. On arrival at the gate below I took the opportunity of recording my self walking through it.
Some would hate this metallic sound but I find the various sounds that metal makes wonderful. Wooden gates are perhaps more oftenContinue reading
With the mist swirling around on my walk this week, the colours in this first photo are, if anything, stronger than they were in reality. I couldn’t remember for sure when it came to post processing. The second shot in this short sequence is even less distinct but is more representative of my memory of the scene.
Dew drops on grass and spiders webs in the early morning – an irresistible subject for photography.
Soon after taking photos of the dew on grass, I was presented on my walk with a spider web sporting the same phenomenon,Continue reading
My walk this week has been taken in two ways – the exploration of Llansteffan Castle and the migration of the StillWalks blog and website. I hope that you have both enjoyed this walk and will continue to enjoy both the weekly walks and other developing aspects of StillWalks.
The sound clip below is a re-posting of the clip I included earlier in the week as I did not have the material to produce a soundscape for this walk. That will have to remain for a full production walk later in the year. In the meantime you can view the images in sequence and listen to the clip at the same time.
Llansteffan Castle Sound Clip
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