Cascade

Swiss Valley Water – Reviewing the Walk

My walk this week up to Swiss Valley Reservoir was a very wet one, but also a very enjoyable one despite the amount of water (except for the fact that my umbrella kept collapsing on me!).

Please note:  I need to let you know  that my weekly posts are going to change slightly – from here on there will be no post on Saturday. I am cutting My Weekly Walk posts to Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the soundscape for the walks being posted on the Friday. Further cuts may be necessary in the future.

Swiss Valley Reservoir

I took the walk later in the day than expected and in combination with the wet weather, this meant it was another walk that started out dark and became darker and darker as I followed the riverside footpath up the ravine.  By the time I reached the reservoir (not very far) the scene was as you see it in the image above.Continue reading

Water at The Waterside

My Walk this Week – Water at The Waterside

My walk this week is somewhere I visit regularly. The first Friday of the month I go to The Waterside, Felindre where Sue and Steve Heatherington welcome all who come along for creative conversation. Sue has also been posting about water in the valley this past week at Sue Waterside!

Waterside Details-5

You never know who you are going to meet but there are often faces I have become familiar with over the last couple of years. The conversation is often philosophical but also casual and so it is easy to talk. The place itself helps to prompt this and alongside Sue and Steve’s hospitality and their entertaining alpacas (yes, that’s right, alpacas!), this secluded Welsh valley is a fantastic place, whatever the weather, to clear the mind, explore and develop new thoughts and ideas and take a contemplative walk around the lake.Continue reading

Cascade Construction

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

Continue reading

Crooked Woodland

Whether there is snow or not this year, this is be a popular place for people to walk on Boxing Day. The footpath round Lliw Lower Reservoir features in my Winter Reservoir Walk, part of the StillWalks at Lliw Reservoir collection available on request or at the reservoir cafe.

The video is featured below, so if you don’t want to go out if it is pouring rain again . . .

winter footpath

crooked fence

From Snow to Ice

The snow stood thickly on this barbed wire fence at the start of my walk but by the time I had completed the circuit of the Lliw Lower Reservoir, it was melting to ice. I wonder if it fully melted before nightfall?

snow on fence

melting snow on fence

Winter Branches

The woodland becomes almost completely monochrome under its blanket of snow. I love the complexity of pattern and texture revealed in these snowy woodland shots around the Lliw Lower Reservoir near Swansea.

winter branches

woodland snow scene

Winter Reservoir

We don’t often get snow where I live but now and then it comes and changes the landscape. These shots are from a production walk I did two years ago. This week I am looking at images that I used in the video and some that I didn’t – almost all the photos I have picked out have different crops to those in the video.

Lliw Lower Reservoir

Lliw Lower Reservoir

iPhonography at Lliw Reservoir

Some alternative iPhone shots of Lliw Lower Reservoir. Having finished the new video collection, “StillWalks at Lliw Reservoir“, I recently had a walk there and did some iPhonography at the same time.

The photos were taken using the ProCamera app and edited in the PhotoshopExpress app on the phone and have also been posted on Instagram and EyeEm.