The Welsh Walker

My final walk of the Gower Walking Festival took me to one of my favourite places in Gower; Rhossili, and it's distinctive landmark The Worm. This post is going to be especially image heavy under the cut - it's impossible to stop taking photos of this place.  The topic of today's walk was a talk by local historian Gary Gregor, along with Gower Unearthed, on Edgar Evans, a Rhossili native who was one of the members of the final ill-fated Scott expedition to the Antarctic. 

This is the walk I was looking forward to the most, the chance to find out more about some of the castles in Gower. I love castles, and here in Wales we have more per square mile than any other country in the world. The Gower is absolutely teeming with them, some visible, some hidden beneath shifting sands and tangled woods. Today's walk was headed by archeologist Charles Hill along with the Gower Society, focusing on the buried castle of Penmaen, and the ruins of Pennard.

There have been oodles of walking festivals recently, and I've wanted to go on all of them - a walking holiday with the creature comforts of home at the end of the day? Yes please! Unfortunately I had to miss out on a lot of them (I need a walking buddy!), but the Gower Walking Festival was perfect, close enough to be an easy drive and, as I've mentioned previously, I love the landscape.

When I was a kid one of my all time favourite pastimes was fossil hunting. Back then my ambition was to be a paleontologist (something I wish I had stuck to), and I was thrilled whenever I had the chance to go looking for goodies. In this area one of the best beaches for fossils is Southerndown.

Today I went a little further afield than normal and met my mother for a walk around Pembrey Country Park. This is a great place to visit because it has a bit of everything; forest, lakes, rivers, beach. There are various trade shows going on most weekends, and there is also the opportunity for horse riding, skiing, or even having a go on a toboggan. 

I decided to go for an after-work run along the promenade. Not very successful to be honest, it's a mystery how some days I feel I can run for hours and other days I can barely manage a shambling shuffle. Today was definitely more of a (gasping, wheezing, stumbling) shuffle.  Despite my fail, it was a lovely evening on the seafront and definitely worthy of a few quick snaps.