Dragon Rambles

A couple of weekends ago, the sun was shining, I didn’t have to go in to work, had no previous engagements either, so I finally got to go back to the Gower. It was an early start as I had a 50 min train ride to Swansea, then about an hour out to my start point by bus.

I got to Oxwich Castle where I’d planned to start, had a snack and was ready to start my trek by 10:45. I knew my destination was Mumbles Head, specifically the pier at Mumbles but I had no idea how far it was in distance or in time. I figured that since it doesn’t get dark at the moment until after 9pm, that I should have plenty of time.

The trek started with a walk down to the sea and as I was starting up on a hill, I got tantalising glimpses of Oxwich Bay through the trees.

To get out to the coastal track I had to walk through a reserve that in no way looked like it was on the edge of dunes. Of course a lot of the dunes were completely overgrown with grasses, so they didn’t much look like dunes either to begin with. But eventually, I saw the sea, and the start of the coastal way I would be taking.

The start was deceptively easy getting around to the end of Oxwich Bay and facing the first cliff I had to climb. Don’t worry, there were tracks up behind the cliff face, it’s not as if I had to scale the rock face itself. But given what I could see of the steepness of the path and that most of it was sand underfoot, I knew it would be a hard slog.

And I was not wrong! But, oh the views from the top.

Once on top of the cliffs it was a nice easy walk along the top until having to clamber down to the next bay and up on top of the cliffs again. Here are some pics of the dreadful scenery I had to keep me company, what a bore

I passed a golf course, on top of a cliff with an almighty drop…

wonder how much of a penalty you get if it knocks out a sunbather.

And of course because the UK has plenty of history, there were ruins to admire.

Of course with any walk where you’ve never been before and when you keep the map in your pack and decide to just follow the paths that seem to go in the general direction (hey, I figured if I kept the sea to my right I couldn’t go toooo wrong), there will be the odd folly. Like in the picture below. I’d come down off one cliff, climbed up a very steep path from the bottom left corner, up to that  big white structure just below the middle of the saddle and down the path that ended on the bottom right corner. Now if I’d bothered to check the map, I would have known where the path went and I could have just waded across that streamlet.

Next I had to get back up to the top of the cliffs, and here’s the way I chose. Now, looking at the map, there were about 3 ways I could have chosen. This one was the hardest. And not even marked on my map as a path. Of course having just discovered my previous folly, you’d be excused for thinking I would check my map to see which way to go. Of course I didn’t! So there I went, and I am quite sure any of the beachgoers who looked up must have thought I was mad. But it wasn’t that bad. Sure the whole way up was on sand so it was a tad slippery. And yes a large portion of the ‘path’ was at  over a 60 deg angle. And I often felt like I was going to start dune surfing down. Minus the board.

And you can see by the picture why I tried it.  It really doesn’t look that steep from the bottom

But despite all the picking the hardest paths to take I got to my destination in one piece, and in just 7 hours.

If you want to see any more pics, I’ve uploaded some that I took here.

Well, I’m finally getting around to updating this blog.  I’ve written a few posts, they’re sitting in a word document somewhere on my computer, and I’ll post them up over the next week or so.  I’ll sort of back date them to be roughly in the time frame of when they were written, or when the event(s) they were written about took place.  So don’t be surprised if all of a sudden you visit here and there are some ‘earlier’ posts that have appeared out of nowhere.

For now I’m concentrating on just updating the content of this blog.  I’ll give it a makeover soon.

I give up. I just spent a verrrrry long time trying to fix the layout on the last post. Of course what shows up in the screen is nothing like the visual box of the editing screen, nor in any way resembles the html code I try to write to force the layout to how I want it.

So, sorry for the mess. At least the pics are there. I think I’ll need to change my theme to one that doesn’t create such huge havoc.

Ok, so what have I been working on over the last 12 months?  Well there was a crocheted shawl for my Granny, which I of course forgot to take a photo of before I shipped it off.  Then there was the dino quilt that I posted of a few months ago.  I’ve since done a second dino quilt, in different colours, that I’ll post a pic of soon.

I’ve discovered the joys of knitting – basically because I want to do some lace knitting.  I finished off a scarf that has been in the works for ages (not a slow job, I just got bored with just knitting and purling), all I have left to do is to stitch in the yarn ends.

Now I’ve started a lace knitting project, but not just any… estonian lace.  I think I had to restart this about 6 times, but I’ve got the hang of it now

As for stitching, well I started Rhapsody in Red when I first arrived in Cardiff. This is a pic that I thought I had posted back in July/Aug last year. But since I apparently didn’t, here you go.

And HAEDs… I’ve done some work on Stella and Pumpkin Pixie.

And then the other month I picked up and old WIP, since this year I plan to finish off things rather than just keep starting them.

And at the moment, I’m working on Blackstone Garden

So that’s you all caught up. For the rest of the month, when I’m not knitting I’ll be stitching on Blackstone Garden. Looks like I might have a stitching finish this year after all.

I’ve just come in to my blog for the first time in ages, and I’ve been looking back over the infrequent posting I’ve done.  It’s been even worse than I thought.  There are some posts that apparently I just did in my head as there is no evidence of them here

Like a post telling people I was heading off to start a new life in Cardiff.

And the post a few months after I got here that had stitching pics.

Well, of course none of them are there and my first post since I moved here was back in March by the looks.  So I now have a few pics of what I’ve been working on since I moved here.  They’ll come in the next post – but don’t worry the next post will be written after I’ve posted this one, it’s not like I’ll make you wait another couple of months.

So, I’ll try to write more posts, more frequently, and have less of them in my head alone