My walk this week visits an ancient graveyard in Scotland. Initially I went to see my grandparents and aunt and uncle’s graves, pay my respects and enjoy the rural location.
The graveyard they occupy is not so ancient but the original church and graveyard are less than a minute walk up the country road and it is the most fascinating place!
The minister there, back in the day, was clearly a notable person if the inscription attached above the church entrance is to understood:Continue reading
Decaying with time, these old trolleys create a strange cemetery in the mouth of the River Tawe, Swansea.
Those that already follow this blog will know that there is more to come throughout this week to tell the story of a recent walk in the docks/marina area of Swansea.
The walk was the second Mission Gallery Walk and Draw with Sarah Abbott that I have taken part in. On this occasion, while I did a little sketching, most of my drawing was with my DSLR camera, iPhone and small edirol sound recorder.
Having read that the winner of the Jerwood Drawing Prize this year was sound artist Alison Carlier, I felt that my description of drawing with my camera and sound recorder while out on pre-production recce walks for StillWalks videos, is perfectly valid.
With The Big Draw continuing throughout this month, perhaps it is an appropriate time to consider and enjoy the broadening definition of drawing.
The skull and crossbones gravestone is just one of the things that makes the old graveyard at Kirkandrews on the Galloway coast in SW Scotland is a fascinating place.
There are thousands of wrecks around the coastline of Britain but pirates did not usually merit a marked grave in the local cemetery. This one must have held some honour amongst the locals!
There are a number of other interesting gravestones in the cemetery, some of which have faces, others have intriguing patterns and motifs.
Last Sunday morning I went to the park thinking I was going to be late to join the Friends of Coedbach Park on a hunt for mushrooms and toadstools. There was a great deal of activity in the park with two football and matches and a rugby game going on and others waiting in the wing.
I walked around the woods but could find nobody looking for mushrooms or fungi of any sort – I found some mushrooms though – you can see them on Instagram! I should have checked my diary, I would have found the event is down for next Sunday, so I won’t miss it after all.
In the meantime I carried on with my walk and took the opportunity to focus on fences instead and here are a few of the shots I took.
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. . . you saw tombstones on this scale made in recent years?
I am going to be looking around Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff this week. By that I mean I had a walk around the cemetery on Saturday (in the bitter cold!) and one of the the first things that struck me was the scale of these angels and some of the other tombstones from the past. Ahh! They don’t make them like that any more. 🙂
All photos taken on my iPhone.
Angel
Angel
Less Angelic, more imperial
The evidence would suggest that one of these headstones has been there longer than the other, but then again, maybe its just the result of the prevailing wind direction – or perhaps one had softer edges in life as well!
Twin Headstones (from the Old Churchyard Walk)
The writing on the stone
They say time heals all wounds. Time is having a different effect on these railings around an old grave in St Teilo’s churchyard down on the marshes near Pontarddulais – unless you consider that nature is healing by gradually taking over.
The trees below will not, I think, be healed by time. These magnificent trees were cut down as part of the restoration of the walls of this old churchyard. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I went there one day to find them gone completely, and I wondered how the residents of the graves felt about it.
Protecting the Dead
Churchyard Trees