A little house of correction in Usk…

A little lock-up in Bridge Street, Usk…

The small town of Usk has several blue plaques placed by the civic society but I hadn’t spotted this one before. Which is strange, as

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Lovely weather for ducks…

Mr and Mrs mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) at Llanelli WWT, late December 2012

Although we are now starting a colder and drier spell – maybe with snow on the way – we have had nothing but rain for months. Ideal if you have webbed feet!

So we recently made one of our regular trips to the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust reserve in Llanelli. At this time of year the

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Photographic scraps and leftovers…

House sparrows in a bush, Tintern, December 23, 2012…

I’m back at work now after a long Christmas and New Year break, and I’m picking over the scraps of our midwinter wanderings. I regret that the weather was mostly very wet and dark, so I was mostly hard pushed to take pictures as a record of where we had been.

Although I have a couple of complete blog picture posts pending, there are lots of

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Blowing the cobwebs away at Rest Bay…

Rest Bay, Porthcawl, on Christmas Day

I always feel the days between Christmas and New Year are like the useless nemontemi days of the Aztecs. In that week we are usually busy doing nothing apart from driving around while I try to snap some pictures. But only now am I sitting still for long enough to share them.

Firstly, here is a refreshing walk along the Wales Coast Path at Rest Bay, Porthcawl, on Christmas Day in the afternoon. It was one of

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Red river in full flow at Usk…

The River Usk flowing through the town of Usk yesterday…

Yesterday, the eve of Christmas Eve, we went for a wander through the Usk Valley in Monmouthshire. There has been flooding in many area of the UK this last week and the River Usk was running red with mud after all the rain – we are all

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The painted streets of Aberaeron

Colourful shops in Aberaeron…

In my last post I shared my pictures of Llanerchaeron, high up on the River Aeron in Ceredigion, Mid-West Wales. This time it’s the pretty little town at the mouth of the same river – Aberaeron.

Like some other

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Llanerchaeron, Ceredigion – a fruitful estate…

Colourful nasturtiums in the garden at Llanerchaeron, Ceredigion, on a wet day in August 2012…

It’s November already and I still haven’t finished sharing my holiday snaps from August! On a wet day (and there were many) we visited the National Trust property at Llanerchaeron, in Ceredigion near the middle of Wales’s west coast.

The property at Llanerchaeron is a late 18th-century Welsh gentry estate – with a house, outbuildings, walled gardens and a small farm. The house is described as a villa, although that makes me think of a Roman country house, or a glamorous holiday home on the Mediterranean, or even a small town house in Edwardian times.

The villa, designed by John Nash, at Llanerchaeron

This one was

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To the Celtic Manor borne…

The old part of the Celtic Manor…

Yes, I do mean borne, not born – by taxi, actually. There and back for a Saturday-night sleepover after a family birthday party. It was a lovely interlude. But this isn’t Facebook, so I won’t go into the details of the party itself – suffice to say it was brilliant!

This post is about the Celtic Manor, with some pictures I took on the sunny Sunday morning. Maybe you’ve heard of the Celtic Manor? It is near Newport in South East Wales and was the

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The Vale of Rheidol by steam train

The Vale of Rheidol steam loco Prince of Wales resting after its long haul up from Aberystwyth to Devil’s Bridge

I have already written about Devil’s Bridge in Ceredigion, but this is the reason we went there, to catch the tourist train down to Aberystwyth.

The so-called

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Devil’s Bridge and the Punchbowl…

Three bridges built on top of each other at Devil’s Bridge, Ceredigion…

One of the highlights of my trip to Ceredigion a few weeks ago was an hour or two spent at Devil’s Bridge, high up the valley from Aberystwyth in the middle of Wales’s west coast.

We went there to take the Vale of Rheidol steam railway back down the valley – but

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