A trip to the Cleddau

Hello All!

I entitled this one a trip to the Cleddau (pronounced Cled-eye, not Cled-ow) but in essence it’s only walking distance from where I live! Well, part of it. The earlier pictures are from a different area, but I will explain in the fullness of blog. As ever, click the image for the full proper quality image…the previews are a tad fuzzy.

I hope everyone is sorted for Crimbo? We better had be as the weather here is blooming awful; every other day we have had very gusty storms and heavy rain and even hail at a few points. There was one evening I came home from work and I was sat in the car for a good 10 to 15 minutes waiting for the rain to calm down or something to fly off the trees in the garden, whichever happened first. A colleague of mine was in Milford Haven at that exact time and he swore blind that his vehicle moved ever so slightly in a big gust…and he owns a truck!

Anyway, enough talk of horrible weather, these pictures show the nicer days of late Summer/Autumn. Firstly, in the Neyland Nature Reserve, a little further along the Cleddau than the later pictures with nice clear access to the sea, hence all the sailing yachts under the bridge (they’re a bit further on, but that’s how it appears here). I’m down here quite often, as the guys who own the yacht I sail on moor it here in Winter and keep it just outside the marina in Summer….

Neyland Nature Reserve – the ducks had abandoned me at this point as I had no bread rolls

A little closer to home now, a very small (and rarely used) launching bay called Port Lion. Reached by driving, if you dare, down a very tight and enclosed single track road. Once you get to the bottom, depending on the tide and weather, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to turn around! Hence I walk or ride. At low tide, there is a small shingle beach where I stood to take this picture….

Port Lion looking toward Llangwm village and the Preseli Hills

Turning 180 degrees now, you can see the estuary disappearing between the clumps of trees and a few pretty permanent fixtures in the shape of yachts that never ever seem to move. I can only imagine this is because the moorings this far up the estuary are very cheap. But, honestly, if you ever visit, you will know where you are as these boats will be here. Unless they have sunk because the rain overwhelmed them! Such a waste.

You wouldn’t want to paddle I know, but it is quite picturesque

Talking of wastes, this is a little dinghy that never moves too. However, on this occasion with my most favouritest (yes, that is a word, honest) type of sky it was making a good picture today. Now we have had the storms, I am tempted to go down to Port Lion and see whether all these boats are still there!

Poor thing looks so lonely. But I bet if you moved it, there would be hell to pay!

Back up the hill,m the single track opens up and I never noticed the field of oil seed to the left but couldn’t help but not this time as it was in full bloom under a blue sky, which was too good an opportunity to miss. Possibly a tad too dark this picture, but it got all the colours I wanted so I was happy.

A lovely Summer image…slightly twee but pretty good nonetheless

Last but not least, a little bit of a hark back to the good old days of Summer sunsets that are a little bit dusty so you can see the disk of the sun. This one wasn’t a cheat taken on another day and was in fact on the same day as all the other pictures I’ve posted here so this is a full day of edited highlights of me wandering around camera in hand.

Must…resist…cirrus…sunset pictures! Can’t help it, I’m afraid

Right, now I’ve said it, I’m going to hop on my bike and going for a quick zip down to port lion and see what it looks like down there after all this wind and rain. Dare I take the camera? Hopefully I don’t get caught in a shower but amazingly it seems to have cleared up now…here’s hoping.

Before I go, Merry Christmas to you all. I hope you all get what you wished for or, if not, a close second! I’ve asked for a Ferrari from my girlfriend, but I’m hopefully for at least a model from her. See you all in 2014 when I have to try to remember how to update my copyright label!!

Thanks for dropping in.

Late Summer wandering

Hello you lot.

So it seem that Christmas is upon us once again. Before I go any further I will say though, that I shan’t presume that every person who reads this blog is actually Christian. I was just looking at my statistics and amazingly, my blog has been read around the world. Staggeringly, I have a reader (singular) in places as far-flung as Uganda and Vietnam. Whatever religion you are and wherever you are, thanks!

Moving on to the images, I am slowly catching up to the time of year I am actually posting in. Now the clocks have gone back here I’m not out as often, so the pictures you see are from my archive still but now we are looking at late Summer. I recently went riding in the dusk on my bike and nearly became a car door handle so I’m limiting that to day time! In fact these first two images are staggered to show the colour of the local fields changing over a few days. This Summer was a pretty good one to be honest so the fields almost changed by the day from this….

A young field of crops, unmolested by the currents wind and rain we have

….to this, a more golden and mature crop. Now if I could only tell what it was. I am very lucky to live in an area close to a National Park where, although we have the refinery area not so far away and an hours drive you pass the oh-so-love Port Talbot, the level of agriculture is quite high, be it diary or crops. In other words, there are always fields to admire of cows to talk to (more in the next few posts…moooo).

A mixture a maturing and young plants in the fields close to my home

Moving on from my insane bovine rambling, I present to you more hedgerow heroes that sprout into our lanes and make it harder to squeeze down roads during Summer. Honeysuckle. Like a number of plants you may just pas by, you might want to stop and look next time you see one. The fruits of some of the 128 species are grown commercially as flavourings although some are mildly poisonous…wouldn’t want to mix them up. In the Himalaya region, there is a honeysuckle that is grown for the specific reason of using the stem as a binding to carry bags up Everest and the surrounding range. Bet you didn’t know that.

A good mix of colour from a Honeysuckle bush in the lanes

Just along from the Honeysuckle, I found this little slug that appeared to have got out of his depth and was struggling over a spider’s web full of water drops. Made me smile to wonder what he/she/it thought was going on to be honest…silly I know but don’t tell me you don’t wonder what goes through animals minds? Maybe not slugs though, that was just me.

I can only liken this to a person crawling blindfolded on a trampoline covered in water balloons…poor thing

And so, wanderings over one of my fave type sunsets and dusks with a lovely bit of cirrus. Those cloudy people amongst you will probably be able to spot it was very still this day as the images show an awful lot of haze/pollution/smoke at the low levels….

Nice cirrus swoosh up above…not so nice haze down below

….hence we are able to see the disc of the sun in this last image, as opposed to being instantly blinded!

I particularly like how the sun is showing the crops in the field in front of me here. I didn’t notice it at the time

There’s plenty more of these types of photos but I shall break it all up next post as I notice my archives that I took the bike to Neyland nature reserve and the Cleddau estuary near me where the weather was, amazingly still pretty damn good weeks later.

Should this post not be this side of Christmas or the festive period however you celebrate (or not) I hope you all have a good one! Hopefully, I shall post again before the year is out and will still appeal to far off nations!

Thanks for visiting….see you soon