Swansea Bay is great in any weather but there can be no question that a dry sunshiny day is good for a sense of wellbeing. Certainly it encouraged people to come on the health and wellbeing walk along the cycle/walking path from Mumbles to Swansea.
Tag Archives: trees
Sepia Sunlight and Reviewing the Walk
A final example of sepia sunlight for my walk this week through woodlands at Stainton in the north east of England. The pale sepia effect on this image seemed to enhance the sense of Summer. I hope you enjoy listening to the soundscape for the walk below while viewing selected images from my posts this week. All photos and field recording was done on my iPhone 6s.
Woodland Walk Sounscape
Arrangement of Trees
Whether established or more recently planted to extend the woodland further, the arrangement of trees in Stainton Woodland where I enjoyed my walk this week, can only be described as formal. Reminiscent of the French penchant for arboreal pattern, there would be a closer match to their taste if the trees themselves were of a different species.
For whatever reason the obvious pattern of the trees seen from different angles prompted me to experiment with desaturation, monochrome and sepia effects when reviewing the images.
I am sorry I cannot tell you the names of these trees but I am given the impression that they are not going to grow to a huge scale. However, if I visit again in another ten or twenty years, perhaps I will be proved wrong.
Into the Interior
The second area of woodland I enjoyed on my walk this week is just a few yards across the road from the first in Stainton, Middlesbrough, but it is quite different. Walking into the interior it becomes clear (though not from these three photos) that the woodland was planned and the arrangement of trees is distinct.
This was the first time I walked in these woods for a number of years – the last time being not long after many of the trees had been planted, so it was good to see how the woodland environment had developed. Naturally there is little or no grass growing in the interior of the wood and this is reflected in the texture of the sound of my footsteps in the sound clip below.
Stainton Woods
My Walk this Week – Suburban Woodlands
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.
Under the Mountains
In a place like Corris, situated in the deep valleys amongst or under the mountains in Wales, there is no horizon to be seen. Seeing as how I love trees so much and they cover the mountains on all sides, I shouldn’t have a problem with this, and I don’t!
Recently I was at an artist’s talk – Lee Williams at the Elysium Gallery in Swansea – where he was exploring the notion that we are affected by our surrounding environment. This is a subject I have thought about for many years but it is hard to come to any definitive conclusions about whether or not the topographical element of our living environments influence the way we are or the way we behave as there are always so many other contributing factors. Those mentioned in Lee’s discourse at the link above relate to Port Talbot which has the best and worst of worlds in its beautiful mountains next to the sea and its heavy industry and pollution.
It could be argued that the people of Corris, while enjoying the wonderful moubtain-scape of their surroundings, also have to suffer what most would consider an abnormal amount of rainfall. Ah well, you can’t have it all I guess.
cemetery in the mountains
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cemetery in the mountains
cemetery in the mountains
Corris road
Corris bench
Corris wall
Rainfall and Rivers – Looking Downstream
After the rainfall had stopped and I was able to get out for my walk this week around the village of Corris in the Welsh mountains, I found the Afon (river) Deri was raging with the volume of water it had received over the previous 24 hours.
I particularly like the middle shot in this trio of images looking downstream as it seems to me to clearly (perhaps that’s the wrong word) illustrate nature overwhelming the architectural presence of man. Having said that, I wouldn’t want to see this torrent of water overwhelming its natural course and causing trouble for the inhabitants. While the river ravine is quite deep at this point, it can be surprising what the power of water can do.
Afon Deri
Afon Deri
Afon Deri
Music, Trees and Architecture
Walking around the outside of Hereford Cathedral you can find some fascinating views of the architecture. Sir Edward Elgar appears to be enjoying the view but the inscription on the periphery of the base to this statue reads:
“This is what I hear, the trees are singing my music or am I singing theirs?” “Sir Edward Elgar, resident of Hereford 1904 – 1911”
In both shots of this statue I like the other activities taking place in the frame – the woman attending to her child in the pushchair and in the second shot, the men in conversation in the background. These activities seem to fit very well with the pose given to Elgar with his bike, pondering, perhaps, a composition inspired by his cycles around Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
Sir Edward Elgar
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Hereford Cathedral
Cathedral architecture
wooden fence
Sir Edward Elgar
Sir Edward Elgar