Kenfig Nature Reserve

Another lovely bright day today, so I took advantage of the sun whilst we have it to go on a late afternoon walk around Kenfig Nature Reserve. It's right down the road from where I work, but I'd never been before, I had no idea it was even there.

On the way in there's a little visitor's centre and a decent sized car park. A short walk along a trail brought us to the lake, pictured top, with lovely clear water and banks lined with golden sand.

And a few doggies taking the chance to cool off. 

From there we took a detour into the sand dunes, got lost, and doubled back. I get the feeling that you could spend many an hour happily wandering, especially with picnic supplies secreted away in a rucksack. For now we took a clearly sign-posted route that lead towards the beach. 

This photo reminds me of one of those minimalist beach paintings that just use stripes of colour. Some pebbles, plenty of sand, just a hint of the super ugly Port Talbot steel works around the corner... but I just ignored that.

An interesting silvery plant spotted amongst the dunes, sea holly perhaps?

The flowers on the iris (I think, I'm not up on my plants) have fallen away exposing these interesting ridged seed pods. I also spotted a plant teaming with caterpillars, which the internet tells me belong to the Cinnabar Moth. Another interesting find was a large tunnel vanishing into the side of a hillock, a badger set perhaps? A fox den? Unfortunately the photo didn't come out very clearly. 

I was quite impressed by this nature reserve, it has a great variety of landscape; dunes, lakes, woods, beach. I'll have to go back for a longer walk one day.