The photos for my walk this week span the two weeks we spent on holiday in Scotland at the end of September. One of the best things about the place we stay in Galloway is the sunsets and arriving late in the day it was one of the first things we enjoyed.
My walk this week is from the last Taste of Gower outing to Port Eynon on the Gower Peninsula.It was a bright day with a bit of a breeze as can be heard on the sound clips I’ll be posting. We gathered at the Captain’s Table as a starting point for the walk and I enjoyed seeing the late display of wildflowers as we approached the beach to amble, stride or march along the sand towards Horton.
We had all come prepared for changeable weather but were lucky to keep the sunshine for almost the whole of the walk. We weren’t the only ones enjoying it either!
The next ToG walk will be this Friday at Rhossili – details here.
One of the main things I try to do with “My Walk this Week” is to give a sense of the place I have been walking. Usually the inclusion of soundscapes helps to provide this (I hope), but I do not always do any field recoding. The advice given to me prior to our day out in Edinburgh was to simply try and get a sense of the place. This we did so far as we were able within the time available and it was much enjoyed.
The Helix, which we visited on the way home to see the Kelpies, was also worth the extra mileage. I think that this final image of their huge heads appearing as if from the ground begins to give a sense of a place where you are forced to reassess your surroundings due to the unfamiliar scale of a familiar creature.
I have posted a total of 14 images of The Kelpies as part of my walk this week and that may well be too many for most of you. However, I have reviewed them sequentially on a number of occasions in posting to this blog and found that they serve me with a good memory. There are aspects of our visit to The Helix, specifically to see these sculptural installations in the Scottish landscape, that I am pleased to have enhanced by the images. The fall of changing light as the sun began to set, the details of pattern and reflection in the structures and a hint at the true scale of the work in relation to myself and the surrounding landscape.
So for those who read these posts as well as those who only look at the images, I make no excuses for the number of photos of these magnificent horses and recommend that if you get the chance, they are worth a visit.
Returning from my walk this week as a day trip to Edinburgh, we took a slightly round about route and visited The Helix at Falkirk to see The Kelpies. I had known about this wonderful installation but wanted to see it for myself. I have done my best with the photos below but like all the other images available online, they cannot do justice to the real thing.
The Kelpies, The Helix Park, Falkirk
It was the patterns and textures to be seen on my walk this week through the woodlands of Stainton, Middlesbrough, that prompted me to try making some sepia comparisons to the normal colour shots I took on my iPhone 6s. Often a sepia effect is used in photography to present an impression of age or times past. Because of the effect time can have on photographic paper combined with the fact that, pre-colour photography, there were not many options to producing the image in monochrome, the effect, produced digitally today, seems a fair one to employ to gain the effect of age.
My walk this week features two different suburban woodlands which are very close to each other and through which I have not walked for a number of years. They have developed in the meantime.
The woods are in Stainton, on the outskirts of Middlesbrough in the north east of England. As with any conurbation there was the constant background sound of traffic but as the woods edge farm fields, there was also the thrum of a tractor engine throughout my walk. Neither of these things detracted from the sound of the birds oe my footsteps on the varying surfaces of the woodland. You may gather from this that my walk this week does have some sound clips to accompany the images and a short soundscape at the the end of the week.
All photographs and sound clips throughout my walk this week were made using my iPhone 6s.
Stainton Woods
A note on the appearance of the blog posts if you are viewing them in an email – WordPress has been doing some odd things regarding the formatting of the posts in emails. The best way to read the post, view the images and listen to the sounds is to click the title of the post at the top of the email and you will be taken to the post itself on the StillWalks website. You will also then be able to click the “Like” button. Thank you.
To mark the end of each Taste of Gower walk we visit a local cafe, hence the name “Taste of Gower”. The Gower Landscape Partnership pays for the teas and coffees but there are always many other good things to be eaten as well, and that was no less the case for the Cariad Cafe in Penclawdd as it is for any of the other Taste of Gower walk locations.
The next Taste of Gower walk will be at Port Eynon on Friday 30th September (that’s next week). Details can be found here.
Cup of tea time at Cariad Cafe
Click play button below and then the first of the thumbnail images to view selected photos from the past week’s posts in sequence.
Taste of Gower – Penclawdd Soundscape
If viewing this in an email, please click the post title to see other photos in this post, thank you.
