A Sunday Walk.

And that's the snow all gone. Here we had sea mist in the morning which eventually became steady and then heavy rain while inland the rain held off until the very end of our walk.

Today's walk began on the edge of the village of Goginan [gog-eye-nan] not too far from the red kite nature reserve we visited the other week. We met up outside a derelict chapel (built in 1868) where we had a few problems parking as we couldn't park on the road in front of the next building along. Also the white van didn't belong to one of the group but to the chap doing up the chapel so we couldn't block him in. There were 18 of us today but eventually all the cars were safely parked and we were able to set off 

Our walk took us through woods down one side of the valley just above the water meadows, across the small Afon Melindwr (River Millwater) and back up the other side.

The first woods we walked through belonged to a chap who had not only built a very large wooden cabin house using redwoods but also a number of workshops and other structures. (As usual I took plenty of photos but today am just posting those that give an idea of the surrounding countryside. Will post more photos later in the week.) The trees in his woods were impressively tall. Forestry seems to be an important part of the economy in this valley with new plantations marching their way up the steep hills.

Looking eastwards back up the valley.

Eventually we came to a magnificent beech wood where we stopped to eat our lunch. Usually I bring a peanut butter sandwich to eat with my coffee but the jar was nearly empty so I added marmalade to the sandwich. That worked quite well. (People do not usually put jam (jelly) with peanut butter in a sandwich in the UK.)

Locally the term 'river' seems to be used for what I would call a stream though I guess these waterways increase in size as they near the sea.

I'd like to come back and walk through these beeches in the spring when the new leaves have appeared.

Near the end of our walk as we were crossing the water meadows we came across this bit of village land with a book swap shed. A lovely idea and beautifully done. Outside on the grass were some picnic tables where you could sit and enjoy the small stream going by. It would be nice to have something like that here but I don't know if it would work in such a large village with so many holiday makers.