Sunday 9 June 2019

Summer evening photo walk (2) - failing light

These photos, in order, show the start of the walk and the return to the same spot an hour later . . . while the light fades, the weather closes in, and the mist starts to rise from the river:











Summer evening photo walk (1) - walk to the church

The summer evening walk has become an annual fixture each June with my U3A photography group. In previous years I've posted images of a sunny evening in historic Warwick, or by the river in Stratford-upon-Avon. This year we'd planned a more rural setting but the weather had closed in and we feared being rained off altogether. We met at the pub, at one end of the walk, more in hope than expectation, and there was some sun and blue sky; and the Met Office app suggested we had an about an hour before the next weather front came over. So we set off from The Saxon Mill, by Guy's Cliffe, across a field, stinking of oil-seed rape going rank (and after I got home, the mud on my shoes smelled just as bad!), to the churchyard in Old Milverton:











Saturday 1 June 2019

Around the Burren (5) - the wider landscape



seascapes from The Burren



landscape views: mountain, valley, turlough*


* A Turlough is a lake that fills and floods in winter and vanishes in the summer. It is typical of the Burren limestone geology and is almost unique to Ireland. The flooding and draining produces a unique ecology.


Around the Burren (4) - rocks, greenery and creatures



limestone pavement, glacial erratics, neolithic portal tomb

local Burren style of building dry stone walls

Tolkienesque views* seen here at a ruined hermitage and holy well, and in a garden** designed to blend with the local landscape

creatures seen: cattle grazing by the shore, frog by a bog, snails, and botanising humans!


* There is an association between Tolkien and The Burren, and a suggestion that Middle Earth was in part inspired by the landscape here.

**Caher Bridge Garden's Facebook page has lots of photos and a review by a gardener gives further background information.


Around the Burren (3) - other plants



blue flowers: fen violet, Germander speedwell, aquilegia, common milkwort


scarlet pimpernel, yellow pimpernel


including: Turlough dandelion, water aven, Irish eyebright, cowslip, primrose, 


ferns: including hart's tongue and rusty-back


plants growing in pockets, depressions and cracks ('grykes') in the limestone pavement 



Around the Burren (2) - iconic plant species



bloody cranesbill


spring gentian


Burnet rose


dog rose

Around the Burren (1) - wild orchids




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