Walking through the double walled garden at the National Botanic Garden of Wales I focused not on the walls but on one or two of the other features. My choices were largely influenced by the light and two of these were the simple and beautiful design of the seat in front of bamboos and the thistle seed heads.
My choice for the first image in this post is however not in the double walled garden but just outside it.
On weekdays in January the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) is free to enter and so we took a mid week opportunity of some clear weather to visit. We have been many, many times over the years since it opened in 2000 and always enjoy the developing growth and changing arrangements of plants, borders and other features such as the bug hotels.
There is a lot to see and explore there even in the middle of winter and on this occasion we were surprised by the current entertainment of butterflies in the hot house.
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.
My walk this week around the lakeside in York University campus proved, to me at least, that it has a wonderful environment for learning. The fading light would suggest it was pretty late in the day by this stage of my walk but it had just turned 4pm!
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.
While away over New Year I enjoyed an exploratory walk around York University campus. This isn’t the campus! I set out rather later in the afternoon than I had realised and it was only seeing how low the sun was in the sky as I walked towards the university that I realised the time.
The low light levels didn’t help my photography but there would be no point in presenting bright shots of a walk in dim light.
My walk this week has been along a very straight footpath that also doubles as a cycle path. I used to cycle a lot but my preference now is for walking – both are excellent forms of exercise and both give you more time and peace to enjoy the sights and sounds of your surroundings so I heartily recommend them to everyone as a means of maintaining health and wellbeing.
Another small detour I took from the suburban footpath I have been walking along this week took me to the Afon Lliw. This is a river I have studied in detail – to be accurate I should say that I have documented children studying the flow in detail . . . from source to sea. The project I was involved in was Our River and you can see all eight chapters of the videos made here on the StillWalks website.
