Not the most enjoyable walk today

If you enlarge this (double click) you should see a faint rainbow.


Sometimes you really should listen to your body when it is having trouble trying to summon up enthusiasm for a walk. Guilt was leaning heavily on my shoulder, and I've put on a few pounds rather than lose them in the last couple of months when the weather has been against walking, or I was stapled to the sofa with my Christmas cold etc. I went with OH to get his paper and got him to drop me off about 3 miles from home. That is a good ploy as it means you can't possibly cheat and make it a shorter walk because you're being lazy. It was cold, threatening rain (showers) and I soon found I had no energy. I had to just plod. As I plodded my back began to ache, and then my right leg. My breathing wasn't too clever either - even the least little incline had me puffing, and that's no fun.

The furthest wooded hill is t'other side of our valley.


Winter treescape at the start of the walk.

Off Piste - onto the bridleway.

The little stream was keeping within bounds this time.

Looking across the Towy Valley at the incoming weather.

A glimpse of the high moors which overlook Brynamman. The silvery beige is the sunshine on the moor grass.


Anyway, I took some consolation from the scenery (between showers), hunched up into my collar to avoid the piercing wind, and was glad to find that the bridleway wasn't totally under water, as it usually turns into a stream after the least bit of rain. Looking towards Bryamman mynydd, and Black Mountain beyond, I could still see streaks of snow highlighting the highest ground. The landscape was drab and sere, lit only behind rising rainclouds and the occasional streak of sunshine across the mynydd, giving the blanched moor grasses a soft almost transluscent look. There were a trio of lambs out with their mothers in one of the first fields I passed, so that's the first ones I've seen this year.

First shoots of Cow Parsley.

There were the first tiny pinches of Celendine leaves poking through the mud, and tobacco-leaflike curls of Lords and Ladies (Wild arum lily), and along sheltered hedge bottoms, quite a good setting of the earliest Cow Parsley leaves. My horse Fahly always loved to eat Cow Parsley and would pretend he had an itchy nose which he just HAD to rub on his knee, and of course, then his mouth would be at Cow Parsley height and he would grab a mouthful. Or if I was Being Severe, he would march up to a particularly delicious-looking clump (he was always eyeing up the hedgerow bottoms!) and stand still and paw the ground to say "Please." He had my number!

A fairy's garden.


For MM - if you ever wonder why Wales is so green . . . we have lotsa rain!


The downhill stretch, and a view of the lovely Chestnut tree in winter.

The first snowdrops on my neighbour's bank.

The river is rising and full of run-off from the steep slopes up by Twm Sion Cati's Cave.



I've just gone down to take my Pear Pie out of the oven and is is chucking it down with sleety snow . . . I said it was cold! I think I'll cwch up with my x-stitch now and watch the racing.