Some days are better than others . . .

Photos taken on a February walk a couple of years ago . . .


. . . and this was not one of my best days. Sometimes you fall out with family, and they with you, and the only thing to do is to get away and chill. Today was one of those days, and my son (the only one still speaking to me) and I did the chores in town we had to do and then both decided the best place to go was the beach.

Well, estuary beach t Llansteffan, rather than by the proper sea, but it hit the spot. He even bought me an ice-cream, bless him. We sat and watched a little sailing boat with sailor-striped sails with the wind behind them bellying outwards like a pregnant tummy, a little cockle-shell dinghy towed behind like an afterthought.



We walked along the beach and around the headland where diamonds stippled the water, and waves nudged the beach like tamed torpedoes. A jaunty fishing smack sped through the water, leaving corkscrew wavelets in its wake. Spangles of light dimpled the waves.

Across the Towy, cottages coopied down into a fold of the hills, cloaked by oak and ash. The bare bones of Iscoed Mansion, from whence General Picton set forth to bravely fight in the Napoleonic Wars (and never returned) redly graced the hillside above Ferryside.

At our feet, the broken Razorshells curled like tiger-striped Emperor's fingernails and along the tideline, cockle shells were strewn like sea-confetti.


A pair of castle windows peered, eyebrow-like, above the trees, combed into a sea-quiff by the shore winds. Below them striped stratas of rock, rippled and folded, red sandstone juxtaposed with conglomerate, all jangling like broken teeth.

The dull boom of gun practice at Pembrey was felt rather than heard as we walked the tideline, speckled plum-duff-like with broken shells and bull-nosed waves nuzzling the shore.

A butterfly greeted us, looking as out of place as a seagull in a china shop.