Woodland Walking

 A couple of miles up the road are two large woodland spaces managed by the Forestry Commission and the National Park. Yesterday's glorious weather inspired us to get out for a few hours walking the trails within them. It's a huge area and we only saw three or four other people, one of whom stopped and asked me if I was doing an 'autumn' project. I was carrying broken larch twigs and cones and some fallen oak leaves. She was doing the same. She was only about five years old but the 50+ years age gap between us was immaterial as we were both inspired by the shapes of the trees and the beginnings of the autumn shades. It reminded me of a quote I found recently. Sadly I cannot remember the blog I found it on so cannot attribute it other than to say these are the words of 18th century visionary poet William Blake:

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity and some scarcely see nature at all, but to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself "

Shadow Play

Every Thursday, Fiona at Paper Ponderings shares a quote with us accompanied by her observations, ruminations and always illustrated with a wonderful photograph. This week the quote (I'm paraphrasing here) was how we are always drawn to the light, yet the shadows are far more interesting and have more to say to us. In my comment I confessed to being a serial shadow photographer, often of the ones cast in the hallway through my old front door. So, when we woke up to a glorious late summer/early autumn day when the sun has a certain sharpness to it, I was caught, yet again, by the flickering movements on the wall. Something in me wants to get into Photoshop and play with these photos but I know less is more and so I will just let them speak for themselves.

Jolly Holli Days

 Whilst every day feels like a holiday for me, my other half is not so lucky, slaving away at the coal face week after week. Before the oil refinery where he works shuts down for it's annual spruce up (which takes months and involves lots of overtime where I rarely see him) he's having a last chance holiday and we are going to make the most of this mini Indian Summer we seem to be blessed with. We started days ago with a visit to St Davids where I've been working on a project about the cathedral for a while. I wanted to investigate something so my husband tagged along with me and we made a real day of it, catching an exhibition in the National Parks Visitor Centre of John Piper's drawings and paintings of the' Mountains of Wales' at the same time. In truth, although I am a huge John Piper fan, I found some of the drawings too dark for my liking, preferring to enjoy instead these posters that the Pembrokeshire National Park have produced this summer to celebrate their 60th anniversary.

 There are about 6 of them but these are my particular favourites, and they have been promoted quite heavily locally. They are so reminiscent of those wonderful 1930's holiday posters. After a number of requests, some very large scale versions have been sent out to the troops in Afghanistan as reminders of home.A quick visit to the website on the postcards will display all of them.

The posters are a reminder of that fact that we live in a tourist area so we've been visiting and re-visiting local places as if we were re-accquainting ourselves with them. This afternoon we went westward to Little Haven where I took loads of photos of the geological features. It is a gorgeous place, no more than a 30 minute drive from home, yet I haven't been here for about 8 or 9 years. I think I should be ashamed as I am forever bleating on to people about valuing the landscape and features on their own doorstep. There were a few visitors still around but up on the Point where we were sat, we were alone, basking in the sun and looking out to the islands listening to nothing but the sound of the sea.I was reminded of a quote about Pembrokeshire that I read recently, attributed to a well known local poet named Waldo Williams :

'..... the tiny islands of the sea are a silver web on its edge. Long singing comes there and the waves' dance on the fringes of the land.....'

We're off to the national museum at St Fagans tomorrow where I'm booked into a specialist tour of their unseen textile collections, one of those Heritage Open Days events. We're not sure whether to travel on from there to somewhere else or head back home and keep enjoying what's on our doorstep. As long as this sunshine lasts of course, anywhere looks wonderful. We shall see what we shall see.