Tag Archives: nature

Cascade Construction

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Nearing The Waterside on my walk this week I have arrived at the cascade construction down which the water from a bygone reservoir tumbles and flows. Emerging from a tunnel which would once have been below a dam wall the river flows through the woodland valley on its route down to join the River Lliw.

The Afon Lliw starts in the same area – the uplands north of Swansea known as The Mawr – and is a part of our locality that I love. I produced video of a project a couple of years ago where local school children followed and researched the Lliw from source to sea – you can see the various video chapters here.

water cascade

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Round Robin

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Approaching the Great Glasshouse on my walk this week at the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire, I came upon this little round and seemingly very young robin. It was bobbing around some tall grasses as though it wanted its photo taken. I suspect it may have been looking for its mother which may have been doing the same thing from the rim of the water feature set at the top of the beautiful twisting path leading up from the entrance to the gardens.

Robin

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Campus Evening – Reviewing the Walk

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At the end of my walk this week it is still only 4:20 pm but the last remaining light in the sky is all but gone. In the shade of York University campus it is completely gone and lights are reflecting on the dark surface of the campus lake around which I have been walking. There was no ice on the lake but it felt bitterly cold at the time – however, this may have been because I kept stopping to take in the sights and record the sounds.

The soundscape is below along with a selected sequence of images from my walk.

Geese at sunset

York Uni night lights

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A Lattice of Branches

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As I wandered along the twisting footpath behind York University on my walk this week the sun slipped lower and provided a wonderful yellow as the backdrop to a lattice of branches in the trees lining the path. There were many other busily patterned views on my walk around the campus lake with the hanging branches of weeping willows creating natural veils against the water or the network of fine limbs and twigs od silver birch against the fading sky.

sunset and tree silhouettes

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Natural Tunnel

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The path is still straight on my walk this week though there was one long bend before reaching this natural tunnel. It would be darker in the spring and summer but with the leaves on the ground rather than on the trees, it is no less beautiful and having moved away from the working urban environment there is also less aural evidence of man. The motorway is only a few hundred yards from this tree tunnel but the prevailing wind direction carries the sound away and so it can hardly be heard at all.

tree tunnel

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Happy New Year – Reviewing the Forest Walks

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Looking forward to 2017 and back at my walks in the forest from July to December in 2016, I have selected from my posts over the last week photos representing walks I have taken in each of the last 6 month of the year. The soundscape is from September and is the full length version of the clip I posted for September last Wednesday. The ambience of the place is unique – the atmospheric conditions were such that there is almost an echo of my footsteps as I walk between the trees. It is still, the birds are singing and there is occasional traffic on the road below or in the distance.

As I am using a soundscape from September, here is a sunrise from that same month, looking across the valley before I enter the forest.

September Sunrise

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Under an October Sky – Walking in the Forest

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October is often the wettest month for us here in Wales but whether the cloudscape below is evidence of this I could not say – I simply found it an interesting arrangement. In reality the weather conditions these days are seemingly so erratic, it is sometimes difficult to know which season we are in or what month it is. It is not easy to tell from these photos or the sound clip if the weather on my forest walks in October were wet or not.

October sky

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