About Me

My photo
Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales, United Kingdom
Bit of a long tooth IT Manager - been and had a few hobbies, as for the title, I make glass beads, its Called Lampwork, I brew my own Beer, its called fun and I take photos, thats the oldest hobby, since I was 16 or so. My first camera was a Zenith E - then a Pentax KR to go digital after a long stint with a Pentax Super A. Now a Nikon D5200 and a D7100 with a Sigma 150 f2.8 macro lens to play with amongst others. Please note all photos used are my own and I retain full copyright to all of them. Thank you for respecting digital ownership

Saturday 26 April 2014

Took a day out for me - then off to the allotment



Had a ‘me’ day last week, it was on Tuesday after Easter, we did some good stuff over Easter but I felt the need to have a day for me and I took Tuesday off to do what I wanted and not have to worry about boring anyone. 

After a lot of thought I decided to combine two of my favourite pastimes, walking and photography. A quick search for info and the 4 Waterfalls walk near Ystrafellte was chosen.

To get 4 distinct and different waterfalls in a 5 mile walk has to be something of a no brainer if you like walking and photography so route planned and while the weather was forecast grey, overcast and showers - don’t care !

There are loads of sites to tell you about this area, it is very popular as you can imagine and not only with walkers but also cavers as the river takes a wander through a cave set underground for a while before coming back up and carrying on to be waterfalls further downstream. 


Personally you won’t catch me down there but I can understand why people do it. One site that has reasonable info is this one - http://www.walkscene.co.uk/description_52/Brecon_Beacons_4_waterfalls_walk_near_Ystadfellte.html

The walk is very picturesque – while it is not very long it is a bit challenging in places if wet underfoot and you do climb a few steps – as you may imagine the path may be at the top of a gorge but the waterfall ends up at the bottom – so steps down and steps back up for each waterfall. Got a new plant tick here as well, Toothwort, Lathraea squamaria a member of the Figwort family but it is a parasite like Broomrape, its host tends to be Hazel, as was the case with this one. Not a brilliant picture it was part of a group of stems but they were all going over. 

This is Field Mouse-Ear, Cerastium arvense, even though it was in the woodland as well

  I used a tripod to slow the flow as it were on the waterfalls – it is always subjective as to how much you slow the flow – but these are reasonable and I feel show the water in the manner that you perceive it. If you use a fast shutter speed its frozen and I don’t see fast falling water that way, for me it’s a continuous flow that is smooth and almost abstract but not quite


Anyway, I hope you like them. The first fall is not easy to shoot as on the side of the bank I was on you could not get down to it and the river curved so moving along the path blocked the view rather than let you get any closer. The path was right at the edge of the drop after the fall looking back so I could not use the tripod on this one.


After this you walked on then down and then back on your self due to a path closure, nice as you approached the 2nd fall from downstream and not upstream so saw a few 'steps' after the main fall working your way up to the main fall








 then back down the path you just came up to the next fall





finally all this time you have been walking along the river in the direction of the flow you step sideways a bit to get to this one, its the one people can walk behind. If you want to get wet !  it feels strange as you are suddenly walking upstream, it takes a moment to work out its a different river !




There were alot of birds around and these rivers have a healthy population of Dippers, not too keen on you being close but you can get reasonable shots with only a 200mm lense




After a few shots of this very obliging bird I spotted a pair of Goosanders, not too common but it is an area they do favour - I managed to get a 'fly by' of the male as he tried to leave the area when he spotted me, quite please with this shot



Then onto this weekend, we spent time on the allotment again, 2nd bed dug – couch grass and creeping buttercup along with dandelions removed,  gave the area a triple dig again and it will need another few more ongoing to remove all the root shards that regrow but we are getting there. Note the part next to us is not ours and we are yet to see anyone tend it. A bit annoying as it is between us and the other part plot we work at the moment 


Saturday 19 April 2014

Getting the Plot - makes a change from loosing it !


A couple of days ago Yoke got a letter from the council, for a change it was nice, her wait on the allotment list was over, we had a plot, well on the day we went to see and while it was available – I would not say ‘plot’ it was a quarter plot. So we now have tenancy on plot 2AA


Due to the waiting list the decision was taken by the council to split plots down this way to get as many people onto them as possible and reduce the waiting time, also means if whoever decides to not bother or cannot continue for any reason its not such a large area to ‘recover’. 

First photo – I dug out the border edge after cutting the grass along the path either side of the plot yesterday, also removed the major growth of creeping buttercup and the large patch of nettles


Today it looked like this at about 1pm, a load of digging later, I dug it over three times in each row to remove as much dandelion and couch grass roots as possible  

Wth a bit of work on the original frame that was left, it now looks like this. The first crop of Pink Fir Apple potatoes are in. We will build the level up in the bed as they grow.


Off home for a tea and to start to plan the next bed. We are going to do the whole plot as raised beds so it is easier to maintain and manage and to do crop rotation etc with.

Thursday 17 April 2014

Well its been a couple of weeks since my last missive, lots happened, eldest daughter moved back in with us – then has been in hospital for severe vertigo, inner ear damage – what a shambolic tragedy that was.

NHS wow, I used to believe in our health service, now I believe in the people who do the day to day work in each area but the management and the joined up service are either incompetent, self serving, arrogant or none existent. All this results in error, lack of care, blocked beds and additional cost for no better reason than they are all chasing government targets and ruled by bean counters ( accountants – the grey suits that cream off the top ) rather than by service and a duty of care. But anyway – she is home now, I only had to threaten them with being sued for her to be seen by a specialist and to get her home. It only took two weeks in a hospital bed for no reason apart from ENT insisting she was an out patient so refusing to see her even though she was still in hospital as the doctors said she was not fit to leave hospital! 

I also went to Falmouth to pick up youngest and bring her home for term break and then we had a couple of weeks of non stop doing – work, hospital visits, flat cleaning to move eldest back into home etc. Well it was that or get bored with all my spare time doing nothing.  

We did manage to get a day or two out in the period, Slimbridge and Cerney House Gardens. Unfortunately it was a bit grey and overcast so not the best weather for Cerney House – still to early for the full Tulip show they have but a few were open and there were other plants that were showing well. Slimbridge was as usual nice – so far only the Hawaiian Geese, the Nene, and a Coot have chicks, all the rest are just getting started. 
Nene


Red crowned Crane

Flamingo

Having a sleepover party with friends

Male Eider duck - the Frankie Howerd bird

diving for seed

Mute Swans

Ahh - Swan Lake

Then of course we had to take youngest back to Falmouth – stopped off at RHS Rosemoor Gardens on the way down. A lovely garden that will have to be on the list for a future visit, the azeleas and Rhododendrons were in full bloom as were the Magnolias, not on the same scale as Wisley but nice. The lower story plants were in good show with superb fields of fritillaries and other woodland flowers   

Fritillaria

Snowflakes

Euphorbia

Fern - new growth

Erithronium

Wood Anemone

Erithronium

Water course to lake

Verity - oh sorry Squirrel

and of course no trip to Cornwall is complete without a trip to Eden. Getting a bit blasé about the tree frogs now and the Roul Rouls but very few lizards and Gekos, but boy it was warm, a really sunny day so the Tropical Biome was toasty. 

They were doing Chocolate in Eden – no surprise for Easter – in this case it was education as to the history and the trading value of chocolate, so you got tokens as locals who grew chocolate a bit of history from a ‘local’ then as you walked through the dome you traded it for ‘gold’, then traded that for money from the Conquistadores, apparently Verity was untrustworthy,  then traded that into a certificate in a chocolate house with the proprietor then traded that into modern chocolate – interesting and educational and at the end the children got chocolate and a few will remember some of the history.

Chocolate seller

Fungi

Geko

Lizard

Robin - yeah okay but it was singing

Whites Tree frog

 Ah well then back to work, but what the heck it pays the bills so we can do the days out.