The Welsh Walker

 Today's adventure took me to the RSPB Reserve at Cwm Clydach for a fairly sedate wander through the woods and up to the donkey sanctuary. It was hot, even cowering under the foliage didn't offer a lot of respite... but I am loving the sunshine we're having at the moment, it's certainly a welcome change from the grey, rainy summers I've become accustomed (and resigned) to. 

I joined a new group (yes, another one!) for an evening stroll around Briton Ferry in Neath. A bit more industrial than my usual outings, but interesting nonetheless. 

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.